Debian Squeeze Pt 1

It was almost the last day of the month (Ubuntu KK released today) and I had plenty of bandwidth left.  I had this new 500 gig HDD I'd installed not doing anything, and my Debian Lenny install, whilst I was really happy with it, was stuck at 8 months ago.  Now 8 months may not seem like much, but in the Linux world it is really, really big.  Not only that, those 8 months had seen the next iteration of the Debian produce mature to at least a good representation of what it would be.  So, it was time to have a look at Debian Testing, aka Squeeze.

Now, I must admit here that I've installed Debian many times, so I do tend to gloss over some details that would infuriate someone new to the craft.  The best grounding I can give is the wonderful tutorial to set up Debain Lenny that is on "howtoforge".

Of course, when I went to search for this article, I came apon a similar one for Slackware 12 which I HAVE to include.  Slackware is wonderful - make no mistake.  If you do not realise this then go stand in front of the mirror and take a good look at yourself...... :)

Back to my Squeeze.

I suppose I should start off with what hardware I have.  Well, it is old.  I have a Gigabyte motherboard that hosts a P4 3.0C intel processor.  I have a sound card add on, an Nvidia 6800 video card and 2 gig of memory, and I recently installed a Dlink Atheros powered WiFi card.  My screen is a 22" Chimei LCD screen.  One final piece of information is that the HDD I am installing to is the slave drive, or "hdb".  Now Windows has a real hissy fit with this configuration - or it has done historically, but Linux is pretty flexible. 

First, where to get a "Squeeze" install CD.  Well you can get a "netinstall" cd from here:

What is a netinstall cd?  A netinstall cd is one that will bootstrap a full Debian install, initially putting the basic files on the system and then going to a repository on the Internet to get the rest.

Another thing I do before installing ANY Linux distro, is pre-prepare the HDD.  How to do this?  easy .. there are several minimalistic distros for just this purpose to partition your drives, Gparted being one.

I am only going to deal with a virgin HDD here .. manipulating one that already has Windows installed becomes more complex.  After booting the CD containing Gparted / Parted Magic or whatever, I look at the HDD I intend installing Linux to.  I make sure there is a partition (about 10 - 15 gig) to install the Operating System to, I give about 20 gig to a second partition for "Home" and then double the system memory to a swap partition.

Now that I have my disk set up, it is time to reboot with the Debian install CD.  Everything goes pretty much as the Lenny install, with a couple of nice touches.  Squeeze instantly recognised the wireless card on my machine and asked which I wished to use - wired eth0 or wireless.  I really liked that Grub installed to BOTH HDD, just in case you made the slave a master. 

Reboot.

A really nice desktop.  I was easily able to mount the partitions in my old HDD and everything was as I expected.

Next?

How to update, install new repositories, install video drivers .. etc etc.

Another post.