Debian as a desktop system

A good alternative to Ubuntu

Yousef Ourabi
2007-07-16
User space | Easy
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Tags: debian, desktop

Debian is well respected as a stable server distribution, and most of the reviews focus on aspects appropriate to server deployments. This article covers Debian on the desktop. It is not a step by step tutorial, but focuses on the highlights of the recent Etch release.

An important difference between Debian Etch and its previous releases is its ease of use as a desktop operating system. Ubuntu has been in the limelight recently, but it’s important to remember that Ubuntu is based on Debian, and every once in a while it’s important to return to a project’s roots. Debian was the first distribution to have a social contract with its users and its full name is Debian GNU/Linux, a sign of respect and acknowledgment towards the GNU foundation.

I’ve been running Etch on my laptop very successfully and I’m happy to report that previous pain points, such as wireless networking, “just work” on my Dell laptop. In addition to this new polish, a graphical installer and support for the AMD64 architecture are both new to Debian Etch. Also included are many favorite free software Java packages such as Ant and Tomcat into the main package repositories.

Debian has the perception of being a “geek” distribution, but I would make the opposite argument. It is in fact inclusive, taking great pride in the number of hardware architectures it supports.

Debian GNU/Linux was the first distribution to include a social contract

Etch contains reasonably up to date core packages. Here are some of the more notable ones:

Xorg 7
GNOME 2.14 with bits from 2.16
IceWeasel 2.x and IceDove 1.x
OpenOffice.org 2

Iceweasel is Firefox

Iceweasel is a re-branded Mozilla Firefox browser. This was done by Debian in order to comply with a demand from the Mozilla foundation that they either drop the Firefox name and media (icons, etc.) or comply with policies Debian found unacceptable.

Installation

I won’t cover every screen of the installation, only a small sample to demonstrate the new installer. I’ll then cover what I consider to be the most important steps of the installation, selecting and configuring the apt mirrors.

The beginning of the installation process is more or less similar to that of Sarge with two main exceptions: the installer (which is new) and the default kernel (now the 2.6 kernel, where you previously had to enter linux26 at the boot prompt to install the newer kernel).

When the boot loader prompts you (figure 1), enter installgui and hit Enter to start the graphical installation. Or, if you prefer to work the older text based installer, simply hit Enter.

: Figure 1: Etch Boot Manager

Here are the installation steps in rough order. Items in parenthesis are actions the installer performs automatically. I have also provided screenshots as indicated in the steps to provide a more detailed view.

Choose Language
Choose Country or Territory
Choose Keymap
(Hardware Auto detection, Network Auto Configuration via DHCP…etc…)
Enter Host name
Enter domain name
(Disk partition auto detection)
Partition Disks, note the only way to setup encrypted LVM it use the GUI
Select Physical Disk
Partitioning Scheme
Partition confirmation
Write to disk
(Writing partitions to disk)
Select Time Zone
Set root password
Setup user account
(Installation of base system)
Configure the package manager, use a network mirror (figure 2)
Select the Debian Archive mirror country (figure 3)
Select the Debian Archive mirror within that country
Configure HTTP proxy information
Configure popularity-contest
Software Select (figure 4)
(Installs selected software packages)
Select Resolution for xserver-xorg configuration (figure 5)
Install GRUB as default boot loader
Installation complete

: Figure 2: Etch Network Mirror Confirmation. The first of several screens that configure the package management utility apt is the one confirming whether or not you choose to use a network mirror to download and install packages from. Select “yes”

: Figure 3: Etch Network Mirror Country Selection. This screen prompts you to select the Debian Mirror archive that is closest to you. In my case, I chose “United States”

: Figure 4: Etch Boot Manager. The software selection screen offers you a selection of packages to choose from. I’m running Etch on a laptop so I elected to install the “Desktop”, “Laptop” and “Standard system”. This was enough to install a reasonable desktop system, which I could then tweak by installing other packages. Choose whatever you feel is appropriate to your current setup

: Figure 5: The Etch installer does a good job of auto-detecting your hardware—simply select your monitor resolution and hit Enter!

The desktop

The Etch installer does a good job of auto-configuring Xorg and picking sane defaults. After the installation was complete, I was presented with a GNOME login screen. Out of the box, I discovered Etch would recognize an iPod when plugged in, detect my network printer almost automatically and allow me to do pretty much everything I needed to do. There were a few extra packages I needed to install, but Synaptic and apt are a mean pair and make this a breeze.

I really like this zen-like approach to setting up a new system. During the software selection step of the installer I simply checked that I wanted both the “desktop” and “laptop” and voila, I had a fully functioning Debian desktop.

Minutes into my first boot, I hooked up my iPod via a USB cable and Etch detected it, mounted it, made it available under the “Computer” and launched the default application associated with it (figure 6). This is on par with other alleged “plug and play” systems. While going into detail about how to manage iPods on Etch is out of the scope of this article, I highly recommend reading “Managing your iPod without iTunes” by Jon Peck. I will say I ended up using Amarok to manage my iPod after finding Banshee unusable, but that is a problem with Banshee and not Debian specific.

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Copyright information

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. A copy of the license is available at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.

Biography

Yousef Ourabi: Yousef Ourabi is a developer in the San Francisco bay area. He is currently working at the startup he recently founded, Zero-Analog. Zero-Analog is currently developing an enterprise application, however, one of its stated goals is "to increase the rate of open source adoption in companies of all sizes, across all industries". Zero-Analog also offers consulting services, all based around open source tools, frameworks and applications.

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Telling new users to add any "unstable" repository (even just contrib and non-free sections) without teaching them the differences of stable/testing/unstable and how to set the default release is very dangerous.

Mixing Debian releases is quite tricky and doing it without proper knowledge will lead to system breakage very soon.

For a better understanding of this issue, visit the howto section of Debian Forums: http://forums.debian.net/viewforum.php?f=16.

Besides that, your review is very positive and I liked it a lot.

"Telling new users to add any "unstable" repository (even just contrib and non-free sections)"

I'm not sure if you mean something like this:
deb http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free contrib

Those contrib and non-free sections are not any more unstable than main section. Those are perfectly stable and tested. There is not any problem using those.

Bottom page two and top page three recommends (or at least not recommends against) using unstable for installing Blender, which is not needed.

If to recommend and use contrib and non-free is another issue. Could at least have a short introduction (two, three sentences) about why that could be a concern to some.

i believe that debian is the best specially if you don't have a fast internet connection because you can download the 3 DVDs or 20 CDs and use them, i'm a gentoo user for 4 yrs now & i have a distro. based on it & localized/customized to server the arabic users needs, and i like debian very much & i'm using it in the production time critical projects & work.

thanx for your nice article you really said what i want to say ubuntu & debian are the same thing.

I agree that Debian is a great distro and is my distro of choice in all cases, but if you don't have a fast internet connection, downloading 3 DVDs or 20 CDs is not really a viable option. In any case pretyy much all distros worthy of the name have downloadable CD images so Debian is nothing special there.

If your 'net connection is "slow" then you are better off buying the CDs from one of the usual CD-shops or from Debian themselves.

Ryan

No, you do not need 3 DVD or 20 CD's.

First half (or so) is binary packages, the rest has sources to packages. You don't need them if you not going to recompile packages from scratch.

Of the first half, you only need the first 1-4 CD's and a slow Internet connection (for installing the few not so popular packages and security updates of packages). That is becouse the packages are added to the CD:s on a decreasing popularity order. Most popular packages are first (with their dependencies).

So if you don't recompile packages and don't install lots of not so often used software packages, you will only need 1-4 CD (or first DVD).

Debian don't sell CD's or DVD's. They let others do that, as that is what Debian was desinged for in the beginning (others selling and changing Debian (like all Debian based distributions does).

You know this information on what to download is not readily available as it should be. I will download the dvd now.
Thank you from a noob. :)

I quite agree with you, I just don't understand why people just got a hardon with the whole ubuntu thing when Debian is there perfectly capable of doing everything else

Don't try to mix releases!! Atleast for new users. apt-pinning is good way but should be avoided by newbies..

Else ... :)

>>contrib and non-free. These are repositories that are not included in the general release due to licensing restrictions.>>

Those repositories are not included because debian aims to be an operating system that is made entirely of free software. I wish more reviewers acknowledged and respected this goal even if they don't personally agree with it. There are just a handful of distros out there that share this goal of 100% software freedom.

While it is understandable that a review should mention the possibility of installing proprietary sofware (the non-free repository, in Debian's case, but also Automatix), I think it is not a good idea to recommend its installation, at least in the pages of FSM!

Why the heck not??? Linux is problematic enough in relation to hardware, without crippling it by not using the vendor written drivers... We live in mixed world, with many colors... an ecosystem of IP, closed source, open source, free ware... all of it. It is a practical approach to use all of it to achieve whatever it is that you want to achieve.

It's not only drivers. There are other software that comes in contrib and non-free that isn't that nice either.
But when it comes to using non free drivers (like nVidia and ATI binary 3D-drivers or Wlan drivers with ndisdriver), it IS a huge problem when upgrading kernel, with broken graphics or no network as a result.
Upgrading with free drivers is no-brainer. That is as easy as upgrading any other software.

This is an interesting thread.

When I started on linux I only understood the "free as in beer" element; suse 9.0 was better than windows 98, and free, so I was happy. I could even easily install proprietary drivers/codecs etc without really knowing what was happening under the bonnet. Problem was, when it didn't work, I still had no idea what was going on under the bonnet. Luckily, because the software was free (as in really free) there was a knowledge base which was freely accessible (in both senses) on linux forums. I became empowered to fix my own problems with the help of others. I also grew to understand the ethics of free software. The novell/microsoft agreement caused me to ditch "open"suse and use Debian.

Lets take a step back though. Lets imagine that Linux is a proprietary system. I would never have been able to get "under the hood", as the the owners of the intellectual property concerned would prevent that. Lawful access to Linux code would presumably depend on purchasing the right to do it, if it was allowed at all. Widespread development of Linux code would cease, security flaws would be concealed from the end user (save on the circumstances where market forces could compel the owners of linux to release them) and the knowledge base which I tapped into to would simply evaporate, meaning that I would have very limited control over my system. We can safely assume that a proprietary linux system would support less hardware than Vista (unless a corporation with a development budget comparable to redmond took it on). We can also assume that DRM would be a central feature of any modern linux distro (if the os is proprietary, why not everything else?). In other words, all we would have is a unix based clone of windows. Incidently, this would mean that any public body/school/hospital in any of the non-trillion dollar economies (meaning nearly all of them) would find the costs of implementing IT prohibitive, unless they wanted to divert ridiculous proportions of their GNP to US/European based software houses.

I can understand that many users want 3d graphics on their pcs; I would like 3d on my pc. However, I don't want linux to get to a point where it will only function in the command line without proprietary software. I hope that Debian et al will continue to resist "property creep" into linux.

Automatix is an anathema to free software. For reasons related to the above, and the fact the it does something which any user with the ability to google "debian libdvdvcss" can do themselves. It is a profoundly disempowering piece of software which has the effect of giving the new user a system full of proprietary code before they have even attempted to live without it.

My advice to anyone who is new to linux is to spend some time living with a free system. I did it, and it's worth it. By all means stuff your pc with proprietary code if you really can't wait for gnash to work with youtube (which it now does), just don't come crying to me when 10 years from now you have to pay a $100 per year to prevent virus from wiping your hard drive and your all of your freinds, colleagues etc have to all spend $300 on "microsoftlinux-ultimate edition" so that they can read the spreadsheet that you sent them.

Digg it

I am wondering how that hideous "This will make an excellent desktop system if only you grease it with some proprietary crap" article tendency made its way into Free Software Magazine?
In my opinion, the article is automatically piped to /dev/null with statements like these. It is like saying "This car is really fast! Provided you put a Ferrari engine into it, of course". Not that I would wish to compare proprietary software to a Ferrari, it is simply to note that reviewing a system and assessing its merits on non-native components hardly makes sense.

Just broke from Sarge (3.1) and graduated to Etch (4.0). This is a great distribution and even though some of the older apps have disappeared to make room for new ones, it still has the Debian flavor many of us appreciate. Even if the apps aren't present, downloading and installing is the same as it has always been.

I have it on a desktop IBM NetVista and now on my new Toshiba Satellite Centrino Duo laptop. Where 3.1 didn't care for the processor, screen size, or network pcmcia functions, everything works well out of the box with the exception of changes for personal preferences.

The Debian Team has definitely made this release simple for user's of all skills. I say this as a Debian follower with at least eight years experience. Great job to all involved in the development process!

One of the reasons I came back to Debian was the disk encryption option that was available from the installer. It even encrypts the root partition (although not /boot).

Especially as the owner of a laptop, I'm conscious of data loss through theft.

With other distros, I had to install a temporary system, use it to encrypt the future root partition, copy over the temporary system to the future root partition, and make configuration changes to boot from the newly encrypted root partition.

Then the distro owners would make changes that made my system not boot. Sigh!

I enjoyed your review and thought it fair and even-handed. The complaints about Debian usually fall into two categories-- slow release cycle and multimedia stuff. I doubt that Debian will ever release new versions fast because that isn't a priority. Debian wants to get it right and the developers will take as much time as they need to do that. The proprietary multimedia stuff is a matter of principle. If you are quick to criticize politicians and public officials who do not stick to their principles, then I think it's hypocritical to criticize Debian for sticking to theirs. Regardless, if you want non-free/proprietary codecs and the other software, it's an easy work around. IMHO, Debian and RMS deserve a lot more respect than they receive.

All in all, I've been very happy with Debian on the desktop (which is the main place I use it -- I've always been a bit surprised at the server-bias for Linux users).

On the other hand, it's never looked the same from version to version -- or it's hard to get it to, anyway. This tends to be because Debian provides so many different GUI and application options, and with each distribution it seems that different ones win out in the task selections. So, I usually wind up with a quite different system every time I install it.

Lately, I've learned to just do the minimal install, and then use apt-get to install the packages I already know I depend on. This works, but it requires a very fine level of management, so it's not really easy.

I think this may be one reason why commercial distributions are often favored for new users -- there's a lot more consistency and so you really know what you mean when you say an "Ubuntu system", whereas a generic "Debian desktop system" could mean any of a large number of different combinations. That probably contributes to the "geek" reputation. After all, as a techie, I quite like the variety of choices, but it's not hard for me to see how it could be daunting to a newbie.

The big difference could be attributed to that it happens so much on the desktop side (Gnome, KDE, Xfce etc) that if you don't follow Debian/Testing, you will have large difference. Jump one version in those are large.

I am severely disappointed with Etch and will be ditching it at the first opportunity, I will of course not be going to M$ but some other *nix distro, when I have evaluated the choices further.

I really wanted etch to work for me and waited until the stable version was released for 64 bit boxes but the problems started with install, after 20 attempts to get an install that worked to first boot, as it did with opensuse or fedora, I ended up having to rebuild my hardware to suit the distro, it did not like my mixture of ide and sata disks and the bios list order.

Next problem was the KDE install step, I had added KDE to the task list for install and then get some devs idiotic choice of KDE components, adding the necessary basics to the KDE group is simple to do after install but removing the total waste of space KDE games and toys and the unneeded wifi and bluetooth apps is another matter the removal of any of these tags KDE for uninstall as well. On the plus side the KDE desktop is not branded and I could setup panel apps etc. completely as I wanted them.

The next problem I had was the paranoia about free in the Debian definition, which is not the same as most peoples idea of free. Iceweasel for example is hawked as being the same as firefox, but it isn't, for me it is totally unusable as none of the extensions I use work and of course flash doesn't work on 64 bit and the easy option of installing a 32 bit firefox for the occasion when flash is needed is not an option as Debian have not yet worked out how to do a multiarch install without using chroot which just complicates things. Also I cannot easily use 32 bit Adobe Acrobat Reader, mscorefonts and many other apps that I need to, there are Debian free versions of some of these but none that do everything I need.

In short I do not like the way Debian is restricting my choice of what software to run, I appreciate their ideals but not the implementation. I need a computer that just works, so I can do what I get pleasure/reward from, it has taken me 4 weeks to get to the point where half of my requirements work and I am now fed up with jumping through hoops for Debian, I know I can get 90% of a working box in 2 hours with other distros and 100% in about 2 more hours after I have built new binaries for the stuff that has no prebuilt ones.

Well first of all I'm sorry to hear that Etch isn't working out for you -- this is the first release that has amd64 support, and though I can't speak from experience, I'm sure there are some rough edges.

It's likely that Automatix will release an installer for Etch-AMD64 -- but it will probably be a drag waiting. Automatix does currently support Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) on AMD64 so that might be another option if you want to stick with a native 64-bit distro.

On the other hand Etch i386 works like a charm for me...if you don't have any strict 64-bit requirements, you might want to consider sticking with the i386 build until all the kinks are hammered out, and/or other post-install polish options become available (like Automatix on Etch-amd64)

Good luck with getting your system the way you want it.

-Yousef

It's always saddening to here someone who don't like Debian/Etch, but it is not for every one, as is also tru for other distributions. First, you should prob. have i386 and not amd64 installed, as the amd64 is mostly usfull when you have applications which uses lots of memory. But as someone wrote, it looks like you are not compatible with Debian basic rules which Debian HAS to live by. Free is more than just free beer. This is why others can base there distributions on Debian subsets (like Ubuntu and Mepsi etc).

I would sugest that you don't complain on Debian that Adobe, nVidia et all don't give specifications that we can use to program free alternatives, or distribute 64-bit versions of their software. Complain at the source of the problem. Especially when you don't give any examples and you already made your choise up. Critics is usefull, but bashing is not.

About initial software selections, like in KDE, there as many "good" or "bad" selections as it is permutations of softwares. So that is up to you to adjust it to your liking or go for a distributions that you can agree on. This is no way Debian or any other distribution can do anything about.

In short You should select a distribution that you like, sorry you don't like Debian's desicions, but that is life. Could I sugest Kubuntu or Mepsi?

Yes you are probably correct, I am not compatible with Debian rules. The fault is mine, I want to have the freedom to install what I want on my box and Debian does not want to let me break its rules.

All I intended here was to highlight the fact that not everything is perfect with Etch, as some earlier posters have implied, and it may not be the distro for people like me. I am also saddened by the poor 64 bit implimentation, the restrictions on my freedom and the general poor setup procedures. It is even worse as there are many fine points with the distro that I will miss, but as I said using the box is more important to me than tinkering with the setup.

For information, I have been using 64 bit for 4 years, I see it as a backward set to go back to i386, and I regularly contact Adobe and other sources of software to ask for 64 bit versions, I also contact content providers who use non 64 bit compatible software (e.g. BBC) to get them to ask for compatibility from their side. If other users and content providers did this more often perhaps there would be some improvements.

Whatever happens Etch is going from my desktop, whether it is replaced by Fedora 7, Gentoo or Freespire is not yet decided. Fedora just works, Gentoo will need some setup but will end up as I want it and Freespire have not yet confirmed the 64 bit version.

Sorry if I sounded harsh in my answer port to your post.

The fault is not yours or Debians. Just different priorities, that's all. But what I got disturbed about what that I read your post as you demanded that Debian it was Debians fault and Debian should change to suit your needs (exactly). Prob. me who didn't understood you right (English is not my first language).

Good that you complains to Adobe et all for not deliver software as they should (64-bit has been here for many years now, as you said). Actually, that is more than I do (but then I don't use that kind of software, as I find other that is good enough for me and will not give me problems when upgradeing). By the way, I do run my laptop with Debian/stable amd64. Only problem(?) I have so far is to view flash movies. But that is not to important for me.

But you do more then what I do to make Linux to show up on commercial companies radar, which is good. Keep up the good work!

I haven't tried Ubuntu or Mepis, so I don't know there quality when it comes to be a good amd64 distribution. But you will get the other good parts from Debian.

About running 32- and 64-bit software at the same time in a OS, Debian is working on it to be solved right(tm) and not by quick hacks in the distribution (but users can of course do that). That is why it's easy(well...) to have crypted disks when you install in Debian, and many other distributions don't have that now. But again, that is priorities each distribution should and have to do.

Bottom line: If there is a distribution that doesn't suit your needs and priorities, get involved and help out, or change distribution. But don't bash it about not doing it your way.

These few posts have helped me clarify things.

Having tried most of the major distro's and found them all to be more or less unsatisfactory for me, though all are better than the borg from Redmonds, I have decided the only sure way to get a distro that works as I want it, that contains all and only the apps I want is to build my own.

I have started at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org and will record all the process, possibly a blog, so others can follow my steps.If that doesn"t work to my requirements then I have only myself to blame :D

First, I wish you success with this. It is a bold and big task, and be a big learning experiance for all parts involved in the expedition. But prob. a good solution if you know exactly what you want installed on your computer.

To put your success and failures in a blog is good for you to remeber what you done. I could also get others like you interested to help each others with problems that whows up.
Heck, even I would be interested in following your development with this. :)

But I am to lazy to do this myself, becouse I have been there, as I have been system administrator on Sun machines and had to install all software from source. I do like that others do the legwork for me, and I only have to report bugs ;)

Anyway.
I wish you to have a fun time and good luck with your project!

Been there done that, IMHO it's a waste of time, and in the future when you look back you will probably agree. If Linux is so unsatisfactory install XP Pro SP2 and be done with it. Life is short, get out and live instead of working on yet another Linux distro.

I disagree with the title. This is an excellent and valuable article but Debian is more than an alternative. It is the most flexible distro and the mother of a lot of distros including *buntu. The *buntus are more specialized for some roles but those roles can be met by a single distro in Debian with a little configuration/installation. Perhaps these titles would be better:

Debian, The Distro.

Debian, for when you want a solid, reliable operating system.

Debian, just Debian

Debian

Debian, a cooperative project of the world to make a really great OS.
---
A problem is an opportunity.

Debian is not a good alternative to Ubuntu. Ubuntu is derivate of Debian and it is possible that is an alternative to Debian but not vice versa.

Debian is an alternative OS and Linux flavor.
I just switched from Ubuntu to Debian due to several reasons.
Have no idea why anyone would say it is not an alternative, unless they haven't actually used both.

I read your article and I don't want you to misinterpret what I write. You are probably not a pragmatist in the philosophical sense of the word. In the context in which you are using the word (a context you have borrowed since it is certainly making its way into many articles) you and others who approach Linux the same way would better be charecterized as simply consumers of content that require proprietary codecs, who will not give up that content, and are unwilling to pay for an operating system that contains all the necessary non-free codecs (aka Windows). That's fine. But it is a form of "market speak" to call people who want proprietary codecs on Linux, pragmatists. It is an attempt to disguise one's basic motivations when one is part of a culture which prizes and sells convenience and instant gratification (and I don't mean that in a disparaging way; it is just a description of what is). One could easily say that those who want proprietary codecs on Linux are simply impatient while those who will wait for unencumbered software are well ... patient. It follows that those who are patient are patient not because they do not want the benefits that proprietary codecs give but rather would prefer that the benefit not be encumbered. This is hardly religious zealotry except in the computer world where some people hang their integrity on which editor or programming language they use.

Where possible, even businesses seek not to be encumbered by another firms licensing and trademark restrictions and the costs associated with them. Business's however are at a disadvantage in that they are under pressure to perform financially and sometimes they simply license what is needed because in the long run it is good for their business. If a business is able to take another route, it would be an odd sort of charecterization to say that the business is operating under some sort of corporate religious zealotry.

As for those parts of the article that deal with non-free software, it is not your job to determine whether or not that should be in an article. That is the job of