• Intro
• Downloads
• Community
• Development
• News
• TALK

Easy Debian

Revision as of 19:42, 5 November 2008

This is a very rough first draft.

This package, when installed, will give you OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, the IceWM window manager, Firefox 3.0 (called Iceweasel in Debian) with Java support, printing support, and access to thousands of applications that can be easily browsed and downloaded.

This package will give you all of these applications without any need for installing dependencies or other applications, and it should work on all of the tablets.

What you need:

• You need 1.3 GB free on one of your memory cards (this includes the built-in 2GB on the N810), although after installing, you will only need 1 GB.
• You need to keep your expectations reasonable. Big desktop applications like OpenOffice and Firefox run slowly on the tablet. They are designed for big, power-hungry CPUs. The N8x0's processor is comparable to a Pentium II processor. Just imagine running these apps on your computer from the mid-90s (remember Windows 95?), and you'll get the idea. But sometimes, you really need something on the tablet that only these apps can provide, like MS Word compatibility or Java applets.

Install instructions:

• You need to install the easy-deb-chroot package. Click on that link on your tablet and open it with the Application Manager.
• When this package is installed, you have to run the "Debian Image Installer" in your Extras menu. This will download and install the big image to the memory card of your choice. It will take about a half hour to download if you have fast Internet connection, and another 15 minutes to extract it on your tablet.

This may take longer... Start the install when you can leave your tablet downloading for a while, maybe just before bed or before going out

• Finally, when you get the "Congratulations!" message, REBOOT.

Using the LXDE Environment:

• Switching to OS2008: Just press the "Home" key (with the house on it) to get back to OS2008.
• Switching to LXDE: Click on the icon on the left hand side of OS2008, or use the Home key to choose IceWM.
• Onscreen Keyboard: The button to the left of the "x-terminal" button on the toolbar pops up an on-screen keyboard. Getting this to work can be tricky sometimes. I've found that it helps to check the "Always on top?" on the xvkbd menu (lower left corner of kbd), even though it doesn't actually keep the keyboard on top, then click on the app that you want to type in, then click on a key on the keyboard. This brings the keyboard to the top but lets you type in the app.
• Exiting LXDE: Log out, don't just close the window.

International (non-English speaking) users:

Please click on the "Debian chroot" icon and type the following command:

dpkg-reconfigure locales

Choose your language(s).

Note that you should choose the language with no period between the language and the iso code (eg. "en_CA ISO-8859-1"), and optionally, the utf-8 version, too (eg. "en_CA.UTF-8").

Want more install space?

If you want more space for installing stuff, you can purge all of the language and localization files that you aren't using. Make sure you have configured your locales (as shown above) first.

Click on the "Debian chroot" icon and type the following command:

apt-get install localepurge; localepurge

This will get you at least 80MB back. You should probably do this first, before starting to install. Running out of space during an install in Debian is ugly.

Also, remember to frequently use "apt-get clean" to clear out old downloaded packages. That will help with free space. You can also probably safely delete lots of support packages. For example, if you don't plan to print from your applications, you can probably do "apt-get remove --purge cups"

FAQ:

Q: I chose Iceweasel, but nothing happened! A: Be patient. Iceweasel has no splash screen and a very long startup time. Use Kazehakase for faster startup while retaining the ability to use Java and Flash plugins.

Q: How do I get to the OK button in the huge dialog box that just popped up? A: If you choose the "Toggle Movable Windows" icon in the menu, you will make your Movable Windows hack; this lets you move the big dialog boxes used by some Debian apps so you can get to the OK button. When you want to go back to "Normal" OS2008 window behavior, select this menu item again.

Q: How do I get the virtual keyboard to pop up in Debian Apps? A: Select the "Set Debian HW Keys" menu item; wait a bit, then you can press the minus (-) hardware key followed by the menu hardware key to toggle the Matchbox Keyboard. Press the (-) key then the (+) key to toggle between normal and mini (one-line) keyboards.

Q: How do I make Debian apps fullscreen? A: Select the "Set Debian HW Keys" menu item; wait a bit, then you can press the minus (-) hardware key followed by the "fullscreen" hardware key to toggle fullscreen for any app.

Q: How do I get the best turbo speed from OpenOffice, Firefox and other big apps? A: Make sure you have the maximum amount of virtual memory enabled in your Control Panel / Memory dialog. Then select the "Set CPU to Performance mode" menu item and launch your app. Remember to set the CPU to On-Demand mode when you're done using the big app, because Performance mode sucks your battery faster. But it still isn't as bad as the battery life of your average laptop...

Q: English isn't my first language. How do I change this to my language? A: Please click on the "Debian chroot" icon and type the following command:

dpkg-reconfigure locales

Choose your language(s).

Note that you should choose the language with no period between the language and the iso code (eg. "en_CA ISO-8859-1"), and optionally, the utf-8 version, too (eg. "en_CA.UTF-8").

Q: I want to install more applications! How do I do that? A: First, you have to update the repository lists. From the prompt in Debian Chroot menu item:

apt-get update

Now, you must get some space back! There's almost no extra room in the image file.

apt-get install localepurge; localepurge

This will get you at least 80MB back. You should probably do this first, before starting to install. Running out of space during an install in Debian is ugly.

Also, when downloading packages, remember to frequently use "apt-get clean" to clear out old downloaded packages. That will help with free space.

If you're comfortable with the command line, you can use the technique listed in this post to double your install space.

Even with all of these tricks, you'll still run out of room fairly quickly. You'll probably have to uninstall packages in order to add new ones.

More advanced users can put a minimal system into an empty image and build a custom set of apps using this post. The most advanced and best way: partition your SD card and put your Debian fs there.

Q: What's this "Iceweasel"? A: Iceweasel is the Debian name for Firefox. It's a long story, but in short, Mozilla and Debian had a philosophical disagreement that ended in Debian renaming Firefox to Iceweasel.

Q: How is this different than Deblet? A: Easy Debian uses a fully installed Debian system to run applications inside of Maemo. The Deblet project helps you install a bootable Debian system from scratch; Deblet is mainly designed for booting to an alternate OS.

Q: I already have Debian in a partition, or I'm running Deblet. How can I use your package with my Debian? A: Edit the /home/user/.chroot file to point to your Debian partition or image file. Easy Debian will do the rest.

NOTE: If you are using Deblet, delete the /home/user/.synchroot file before running Easy Debian for the first time, so your Deblet config files don't get overwritten. Remember that you'll need to make a user called "user" in Deblet (with the proper ID) for things to work correctly. Also note that your maemo home directory will be used by default. This can also be changed in the .chroot file.