Debian Wheezy - Install and Config on an OLD X31 Laptop - part 1

 v0.2

22 May 13

Now that Wheezy has been released stable, I thought it might be appropriate to re-visit the installation on an old computer, just to see how it goes.  I have an IBM X31 laptop that is about 10 years old.  It has a 1.4 centrino, 768 meg of memory and an ati mobility radeon gpu.  What I want to do here is to go through the installation of Wheezy, concentrating on the little bits that people may find unusual and need some re-assurance on, then discuss how I configured the system, what applications I loaded and generally how I made the system useable.  The present system on it is PCBSD 9.1.  I found that to be too slow for my liking, so back to Debian for the desktop.

Stupid is as Stupid does

Too often I hear unwarranted critisism of Debian which is almost always ill-informed and .. well .. just basically "stupid".  I recently saw a posting of someone highly critical of Debian because it would not install on any of their machines - there were no drivers for their network cards and it kept complaining about the CPU.  Some basic research would have shown them they needed to do the simple step of putting the easily found firmware onto a USB stick or download the installation ISO which included the non-free drivers.  Of course they had the wrong ISO anyway .. they were trying to install 64bit Debian onto a 32 bit processor.  The moral?  Make sure you blame the correct "tool".

Debian Versions

Debian is not just one distro.  It is three separate distros, or branches, that can be mixed together to form whichever explosive grade you are brave enough to stand.

• Stable - currently Wheezy.  Server or conservative desktop.  Rock solid with software that has been tested for months - which is why it is "older".  New software versions will NEVER appear in stable.
• Testing - currently Jessie.  Generally suitable for an advanced desktop - software that has done a couple of weeks bug checking.
• Unstable - Adrenalin Junkie desktop - software straight from the developer.

Installing Wheezy

For the installation, I suggest you first read the excellent guide on howtoforge "the perfect desktop Debian Squeeze".  That will provide a sound starting point and in itself will show you how to find your way round a Debian install.

I downloaded the 32bit 386 CD1 using the torrent from the Debian website and burnt it.  There are other options, namely use the " netinstall " cd, but that is what I did.  I chose the default install using the text screens.  Being less powerful than is normal for today, there were considerable delays of blank blue screens between steps, but it got there.  Then it displayed the message:

missing firmware ipw2100

This indicated the wireless card I had installed in the miniPCI slot needed a non-free driver.  Easy.  I'd previously downloaded and expanded the driver firmware zip file from Debian (which includes both 32 and 64 bit), into a folder on a USB stick.  I inserted it, and the machine then searched the stick until it found the drivers and then continued, finally telling me the connection choices I had:

• eth0 intel pro 100 wired
• eth1 intel wireless/pro 2100 on a miniPCI card  G
• wlan0 Atheros AR5212/AR5213 built in wifi B

The installer suggested wlan0

The next screen presented me with available networks   then asked the type of encryption .. I chose WPA, typed in the password and off it went ...

The partitioner gives you four choices.

• Guided for the entire disk, giving you the choice of everything in one partition, a separate home partition, other partitions
• Guided for LVM - the logical volume manager - this allows you to configure multiple disks into RAID
• Guided LVM encrypted - allows you to set up an encrypted disk.  When the machine boots, it asks a password for the disk.
• Manual

Just because I can, I chose the encrypted option.

It then asked me which disk I wished to partition and identified both the IDE internal disk and the attached USB stick as SCSI disks, sda and sdb respectively.  I chose the internal one (der) and opted for only one partition.  Past experience tells me the formatting takes a LOOONNNGGG time for the encryption .. for 40 gig disk.  First step was to erase the disk, it took just over 2 hrs this time.  It then asked me for a passphrase for the disk encryption.

After the base install, it was time for the specific software such as Desktop etc.  Debian uses a command called "tasksel" for this.  Now I knew the ISO had not burnt quite correctly but everything had gone well till this point when the installation failed.  Not to worry, I simply unchecked all of the selections and this allowed the installation to complete with only the base selection (which is still considerably more powerful than MSDOS of yore).  Everything worked for the boot into a basic command line.

What I planned to do was boot to the command line in root, and then run " tasksel " and continue the installation using a Debian Mirror, however when I did, the wireless didn't work owing to the restricted install, and since I could be neither bothered to get it going, nor find an ethernet cable to continue, I just burnt another ( good this time ) CD and re-did the install.  Least work for me since this was simply happening in the background.  The full install of the default desktop took 4.5 hrs which includes 2 hrs to erase the disk for the encrypted disk - if you want a vanilla install, it would be 2.5 hrs - and this on a laptop that is roughly as powerful as a Pentium 4 3.0.

Now, how long does it take to boot?  I do know that booting into KDE on PCBSD was very slow on this machine.

• Boot to Grub - 8 sec
• Grub to Passphrase - 4 sec
• Passphrase to Gdm3 - 45 sec
• Gdm3 to Gnome Classic mode - 25 sec  (Gnome 3 does not work on this machine, the graphics are not good enough).
• Gdm3 to lxde first time -  6 sec.

There is a significant improvement to the default artwork between Squeeze and Wheezy.  The previous artwork made me want to rip it out immediately whereas the Wheezy artwork is understated and far more elegant.  I can see that it would not get in your way when doing work.  I like it.

Gnome Classic

The default Gnome Classic mode is really quite nice.  There are four workspaces shown along the bottom panel, and along the top, there is:

• Applications Menu
• Places Menu
• Date and time
• Battery indicator and charging status
• Volume selector
• Bluetooth selector (I'd forgotten this laptop had bluetooth)
• Network applet
• "User Menu" on the far right, with availability, System settings and session / power selections.

I had a play with the function keys and "trackstick" .. all worked as far as I could tell.  There is of course, a package to deal with IBM laptops.  During the course of playing with the keys, I turned off the wireless access.  When you turn off wireless, you turn off all adapters.  I simply went to the network applet, selected the adapter I wanted and off it went and connected.  Painless.

Conclusion

I have found the Debian Installer to be one of the most reliable ways of installing Linux to a computer.  Debian 7.0 may not be spectacular, but it is nice.  It does its job and stays out of your way whilst allowing you to enhance it with later packages.

Next .. enhancing the basic Wheezy ..



Later.