Debian Lenny
Debian Lenny works ok on my desktop computer, an Asus Pundit AH1 box with dual core AMD processors and nvidia graphics and sound. The Lenny release is the current ‘stable’ and so has slightly old packages (Firefox 3.0xx and OpenOffice 2.4) but runs fast. I can always upgrade to Squeeze (the current ‘testing’) when I find a vital reason to.
A lot of things just worked once I did a ‘net install’ from the ‘small’ cd image (just the base system and a package manager) and chose the desktop and standard options. The rest was downloaded over the hard wired internet connection, so I have the up to date packages, rather than installing from a ‘large’ cd and then updating most of the system.
I managed to find work-rounds for all the issues that have arisen so far, mostly from the Debian forums. Below is a quick list of my findings
- nvidia graphics drivers, the module assistant just worked
- British keyboard, had to fiddle with xorg.conf and also set the language to British English at the log in screen
- Printing, my Samsung ML1640 didn’t work with the instructions from open printing, but using the feature in the edit printers dialogue to manually find a ppd did get printing working. You download the linux driver from Samsung to find the ppd file.
- Sound, you have to add an option in one of the initialisation files to get the sound working properly. Then you have to reduce the ‘inline’ volume using alsamixer. This was the most time consuming fiddle.
- Running Java applications (freemind, jUploadr, HotPotatoes), you have to install the Sun Java Virtual Machine then make sure that the Sun JVM is the default.
- Update the flashplayer to version 10, I just used the direct method, downloading the linux binary from Adobe
- Make the screen rendition of fonts a little smoother, by carefull choice of settings.
The scanner just worked with Xsane, and Rhythmbox automatically downloaded the codecs for a couple of mp4 and aac tracks I have on my music player.