[buug] Setting up Debian

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Will Sargent (will_sargent at yahoo.com):

> I got past the initial hump of installing an NVIDIA driver and
> recompiling the kernel with the special debian command, but I'm still
> hazy on how X and apt-get works.

You don't _have_ to use make-kpkg to compile non-Debian-packaged kernel
sources.  It's really just a convenience.

> As I understand it, apt-get will do an update against whatever I put
> in source.list.  I initially installed everything using unstable
> (woody) before I realized that secured packages were only guaranteed
> against stable (potato) versions.  So I changed the source and did an
> update... and nothing happened.  How can I revert debian back to the
> potato packages using apt-get?

You know, I _used_ to know how to do this, but have forgotten.  You
should ask on the debian-user mailing list.

But are you _sure_ you want to revert to 2.2/potato?  Hardly anyone uses
it, any more, because its versions are ultra-conservative to the point
of lunacy.  And 3.0/woody is NOT the unstable branch; it's the "testing"
branch, which has proven so extremely solid that it's exactly what's
lead to 2.2/potato having hardly anyone using it.

You might want to ask your other question on debian-user, too.  I
suspect you just need to remotely start the display manager, but am not
sure. 

One of the reasons I'm not sure is that I wouldn't want to do that.  I
mean, why on _Earth_ would you want to use MS-Windows 2000 as your
console for remote X11 sessions?  Why not use X11/Linux as your local
desktop, and get to the few Win32 things you need remotely via VNC?

But that's obviously up to you.  And there's an answer to your question,
but I don't have it handy.  (It's not Debian-specific, either.)

Regarding Debian, you may find this handy:
http://qref.sourceforge.net/quick/

And maybe my disorganised collection of tips, which has the more recent
stuff at the bottom:  http://linuxmafia.com/debian/tips

-- 
Cheers,                                      "Reality is not optional."
Rick Moen                                             -- Thomas Sowell
rick at linuxmafia.com