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    Debian: Try It; You'll Like It
    Debian: Try It; You'll Like It
    Debian: Try It; You'll Like It
    Ebook67 pages59 minutes

    Debian: Try It; You'll Like It

    By Ed Hurst

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    About this ebook

    This book is aimed at the great average middle of computer users, proficient but by no means a technician. You are not stuck with Windows or Mac. You don’t have to surrender to the profit-driven upgrade cycle. You can still use your computer and keep it secure and gain a measure of control you could not otherwise have. The answer is replacing Windows with Linux (it runs on Macs, too). It’s quite possible the average computer user can learn to install and run Debian with at least as much savvy as you ran Windows. You don’t have to become a computer technician to understand it; it’s not that hard.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEd Hurst
    Release dateDec 20, 2013
    ISBN9781311130174
    Debian: Try It; You'll Like It
    Author

    Ed Hurst

    Born 18 September 1956 in Seminole, OK. Traveled a great deal in Europe with the US Army, worked a series of odd jobs, and finally in public education. Ordained to the ministry as a Baptist, then with a non-denominational endorsement. Currently semi-retired.

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      Book preview

      Debian - Ed Hurst

      Debian: Try It; You’ll Like It

      By Ed Hurst

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2013 by Ed Hurst

      Copyright notice: People of honor need no copyright laws; they are only too happy to give credit where credit is due. Others will ignore copyright laws whenever they please. If you are of the latter, please note what Moses said about dishonorable behavior – be sure your sin will find you out (Numbers 32:23)

      Permission is granted to copy, reproduce and distribute for non-commercial reasons, provided the book remains in its original form.

      Cover Art: Paste up of Open Source and Public Domain art, created by the author using GIMP on a Debian computer. Laptop image is Public Domain; source. Debian art logo is GPLv2; source. Cover art falls under GPLv2 and is freely available upon request in several electronic formats, including a version without the text.

      Other books by this author include Mystic Tales of Romance and A Course in Biblical Mysticism.

      Debian: Try It; You’ll Like It

      Introduction

      0: Why Debian Linux

      1: Installation

      2: The XFCE Desktop

      3: Everything’s a File

      4: Brotherhood of the Commandline

      5: Safe Surfing

      6: More Safe Surfing

      7: ATI and NVIDIA Drivers

      8: Another Browser

      9: Multimedia

      10: Final Considerations

      Introduction

      This book is aimed at the great average middle of computer users, proficient but by no means a technician.

      There are billions of computers in this world and it seems most of humanity has encountered at least one. They have become nearly ubiquitous and virtually necessary for much of what humans do. We can expect them to become even more important in the near future. When operating on this scale, we can’t avoid thinking in broad generalities.

      Most computers run some version of Windows, the operating system developed by Microsoft. They are easily one of the most powerful commercial influences on the earth. Nothing here is meant to imply Microsoft is particularly evil, but they don’t necessarily operate in your best interests. We also do not suggest Windows is inferior, but the priorities for its design do not put the user first. With Microsoft, the software is not the product. You as the user are the product delivered to their corporate partners for marketing and other forms of manipulation for profit. System security is a priority, but not in the sense of giving you maximum control over the system. Microsoft secures Windows against attacks on their profit margin. That is how it works with commercial software.

      In the minds of most people, Apple is the second biggest, but they supply both the hardware and the operating system together. It’s different in many ways from Windows and is advertised differently, sold to a different audience. It’s by far the most expensive option. Their attempts to control and constrain the user are even tighter than you experience with Microsoft.

      And then there’s everything else. Most likely you’ve at least heard of something called Linux. In terms of numerical presence, it’s easily in third place. It belongs to a much larger type of software development called Open Source. The underlying code is wide open to anyone interested and able to participate in writing it. Anyone can change it to suit himself. Granted, when you take away the profit motive, what’s left is not necessarily any friendlier to the common user who can’t understand the code, much less write his own. Most Open Source developers are in it for themselves, in that sense. They are scratching their own personal itch for the most part, and you may not like the results. Fortunately, a large number of developers do take some interest in the user’s experience and make room for some of the more common options users like to see.

      So maybe you are stuck with some aging Windows XP machine and as of April 2014 it’s no longer supported with security updates. But the hardware still works fine. Can you afford a new machine? Can you afford the next new version of Windows? Could your machine run it if you bought it?

      You are not stuck with that. You don’t have to surrender to the profit-driven upgrade cycle. You can still use your computer and keep it secure and gain a measure of control you could not otherwise have. The answer is replacing Windows with Linux (it runs on Macs, too). It’s quite possible the average computer user can learn to install and run Debian with at least as much savvy as you ran Windows. You don’t have to become a computer technician to understand it; it’s not that hard.

      This whole book was written on a Debian computer.

      0: Why Debian Linux

      Starting the chapter count with zero is sort of an inside joke for computer geeks, particularly among those involved in Linux. A typical list of things starts with zero. It’s a metaphor for starting with a clean slate and getting it right, taking control of the results. Switching to Linux doesn’t merely put you in charge of things; it grants a sense of power you won’t easily get from Windows or Mac. But it’s really about the people involved and the computer subculture of DIY.

      The primary reason Linux computers seldom get viruses is the Linux user culture. There is

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