To Deb or not to Deb
 

That is my question.

I like the idea of using "Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!" but will it give me any notable improvements?

I already use Gnumeric and Abiword but it would be cool to use Iceweasle too.

The apps that I most use are:
Clawsmail
Abiword
Gnumeric
Default web browser
Maemo mapper
Feed circuit
Xournal

So I guess what I'm asking is would I gain anything by switching? I know that I can run them both but would I get more than I lost in space.

If there was a great Debian contacts, calender, Apple integration and Samba program then I would jump at it.

What programs are available?

Should I move to an external card for booting?

Thanks in advance

Steve

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

Good question; one way to find out...
I'd install it and try; it's not hard now, so you're not losing that much time if you decide it's a waste of space.

Not sure in those categories, but you can browse http://packages.debian.org/; anything available for architecture armel should be fine.

Well, I'd strongly recommend SD booting from one card or the other.
I'm not sure which device you have; if it's the N810, then an external card would probably get you a speed pickup as well as more room than the 2GB internal. If it's an N800, I find it more convenient to boot of the internal card, and be able to swap the more easily accessible external card with my camera or laptop...

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

Thanks very much, I will try it out!

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

Benson - which desktop environment (KDE or Gnome) would you recommend for a deb on an n810?

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

AAAAaaaaagghhhhh!!!! NNNNOOOOooooo!!!
;)

Gnome would be my pick if I had to, but definitely neither. (They're both bloated disgusting things.) Assuming you're talking chroot, you can just use hildon for most things, and for the things that really need a WM, it comes with lxde, which I actually haven't tried yet, but is apparently somewhat lighter than either of them...

I'm currently (happily) using a Maemo port of FVWM2, but it's not for everyone. I'd stay with lxde, unless you find it repugnant. Enlightenment might also be a good pick.

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

LXDE is like Gnome's tiny sister. She looks a lot like Gnome (all the Gnome themes work; I use Ubuntu's "human" theme, personally) but she actually runs at a usable speed on the tablet. Gnome can run on the tablet, but it is more of a "hey look what I can do" kind of thing; not hugely useful with our limited resources.

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

I have an earlier version installed on my N800, how do I update to the latest?

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

Thanks, will give it a go.

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

Window Maker is at least as light as LXDE and is available from the Penguinbait site, but it doesn't seem popular here for some reason.

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

Penguinbait's windowmaker is still on Maemo.. not actually In the chroot environment which appears to be the focus of most of the answers here..

Windowmaker will also run in Debian/Chroot of course.. but again: like FVWM2 pointed out by Benson; windowmaker is not for everyone.

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

LXDE is not just a window manager, like IceWM or WindowMaker or FVWM2. It is a very slim "Desktop Environment", which mainly means it has a file manager (which manages the desktop icons, etc) and some settings apps bundled in. It feels very full-featured.

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

And as for the original post's question, I think the whole idea of Easy Debian is supposed to be that you aren't really committing to much by installing it. Sure, you need a big enough SD card, but they aren't terribly expensive these days.

Go out and buy a 2GB card and swap it into your N810, fire up Easy Debian and download the image onto your new card. If you don't like it, oh well, no big deal. Delete the image file and put some videos on the card for watching on the bus.

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

I keep getting an error after downloading the image file. A box comes up saying
"TAR ERROR

ERROR! ERROR! ERROR!

TAR FAILED!

(MAYBE OUT OF SPACE ERROR)

Unable to install EASY DEBIAN IMAGE FILE"

Under the box in the terminal it says "tar: unrecognized option '--usecompress-program'

I have 3.2 gig spare on my memory card and 30.8 m on my N800.

Do you think the tar file is corrupted?

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

I'm having real problems trying to partition and clone the OS to a larger card

External 8 gig on a N810

I keep finding lots of threads that seem out of date? I try to follow the instructions but it's just not happening. Can someone recommend a thread which I should follow that is up to date?

Thanks

Steve

Re: To Deb or not to Deb
 

I decided to drop down to a 2 gig card and ignore the card corrupted message, I then did the install twice and it is all working!

Thanks