Installing Debian Linux on PPC Part III - Installing the GUI

By now you should be booted into your new system (if you're dual booting OS 9 and you didn't see a "MacOS" option in yaboot, I'll show how to add it manually in Part IV). You've past the startup dialogues and are staring at a terminal prompt, yourhostname login: _

Here you want to type root, then enter your root password. Now you're logged in as root with all the superpowers that comes with it. Don't let it go to your head, though. You'll only be the root user momentarily.

We logged in as root because in order to get administrative access through your user account, you have to install the sudo package first. So at the command prompt, type:

aptitude install sudo

Aptitude is the installer program we'll be using. Other people may use apt-get, but they're basically the same. Once it's done installing, type visudo at the next prompt and you'll see a text file to edit. Navigate down to the line:

root ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

and just below it add the line:

yourusername ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Then save changes with ctrl + o (and name it "/etc/sudoers" not "/etc/sudoers.tmp") and exit with ctrl + x, and now you can logout of your root session by typing logout.

At the next prompt, type your username and user password and you should be logged in with sudo capabilities. Incidentally, if you want to take a break here, enter:

sudo shutdown now -h

and this will shutdown your computer.

But if you're still here, now's the time to install your GUI. I said this would be an Openbox install which is lightweight, so the downloading shouldn't take too long. At a terminal prompt, type on one line:

sudo aptitude install xorg lightdm openbox obconf obmenu gnome-themes gnome-themes-extras gtk2-engines-murrine murrine-themes gtk2-engines-pixbuf gtk3-engines-unico fonts-liberation fonts-freefont-otf lxappearance nitrogen xscreensaver

Let's break this down:

1) Xorg is required as your X window server.
2) LightDM is a brand new login manager for Wheezy (incidentally, if you go without a login manager and just use startx, expect to have problems automounting external devices).
3) Openbox, obconf, and obmenu are required for Openbox.
4) The gnome, murrine, pixbuf, and unico packages install themes and also engines that some third party themes require (though in Jessie gtk3-engines-unico causes some third party themes to crash, so maybe uninstall that).
5) fonts-liberation and fonts-freefont-otf are for extra fonts.
6) LXAppearance manages themes, icons, and fonts.
7) Nitrogen manages wallpapers.
8) And XScreensaver is, as incredible as it may seem, a screensaver.

Enter your password and watch the install happen. Once done, there are a few more things to install. But first you need to edit your apt-sources list by typing:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

This is your package source list. You want to add non-free repositories by adding "contrib" and "non-free" to each of the entries like this (single line):

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free

Make sure they all end in main contrib non-free. Then save changes and exit, and run:

sudo aptitude update

to update your repositories (don't forget that last step!).

Now if you have a first-generation Airport card or an ATI graphics card you can install nonfree firmware, and you also may want to add the Microsoft fonts installer for fonts many web pages use (single line):

sudo aptitude install firmware-linux-nonfree ttf-mscorefonts-installer

The mscorefonts installer will auto-launch and take a minute to install all the fonts.

Now let's install some applications. Since my laptop is going to be used for web surfing, writing, and music/video playing, I'm going to install just a basic set by typing on one line:

sudo aptitude install iceweasel claws-mail gftp sabnzbdplus transmission audacious vlc mplayer minitube leafpad libreoffice libreoffice-gtk fotoxx shutter gpicview qpdfview asunder xfburn rox-filer lxterminal default-jre icedtea-plugin synaptic

1) Iceweasel is Firefox rebranded.
2) Claws Mail is similar to OS X's Mail.app.
3) gFTP is for moving files between Macs on your network.
4) Sabnzbdplus and Transmission (execute command is transmission-gtk, FYI) are for Usenet and BitTorrent.
5) Audacious is a really cool lightweight music player.
6) VLC and Mplayer are video players (G3 users will encounter a bug with the official repository packages--workarounds are in Part V - Bugs & Quirks).
7) Minitube is like MacTubes for Linux (UPDATE: seems broken lately, I wrote about some alternatives here and here).
8) Leafpad is a simple text editor.
9) LibreOffice is for those of us who can't abide by Abiword, and libreoffice-gtk ensures LibreOffice uses your GTK theme.
10) Fotoxx is a lightweight image editor.
11) Shutter is a Skitch replacement.
12) GPicView and QPDFView are for viewing pics and pdfs.
13) Asunder is a CD ripper and encoder, while xfburn is for burning discs.
14) Rox-filer is a lightning fast file manager that I wrote about here (Thunar and PCManFM are more "popular" alternatives).
15) LXTerminal is a close equivalent to OS X's Terminal.app.
16) default-jre installs open-source java (replace jre with jdk if you intend to develop java applications), and icedtea-plugin is a java web plug-in (some people report they need to disable this in Iceweasel because it causes their cpu to jump to 100%).
17) Synaptic is a package manager for those of you who prefer a GUI front end to Aptitude/Apt-get.

Here's as good a place as any to show you a little Aptitude trick. I also want to install an archive manager called File-roller, but when I do it wants to install Nautilus and many other optional dependencies, which I don't want. So to just install File-roller, do (on one line):

sudo aptitude install file-roller --without-recommends

and you won't get the whole repository with it.

Once all that's done, there's one more thing you need to do before entering the GUI. If you're using a one-button mouse or a one-button laptop, using Openbox without middle and right click will be a highly unpleasant experience--as in you literally won't be able to do anything except stare at the screen and play with your cursor. Debian now has middle and right-click out of the box with mouseemu (as F10 and F11, respectively), but I always used this older method:

sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf

and add the following three lines at the end (and note there's no forward slash before "dev"):

dev/mac_hid/mouse_button_emulation = 1
dev/mac_hid/mouse_button2_keycode = 97
dev/mac_hid/mouse_button3_keycode = 100

This will make fn + ctrl and fn + alt your middle and right-click keys. Or if you prefer the enter key (next to the spacebar on a laptop, or on the number pad on an extended keyboard) for right-click, replace 100 with 96. Other common choices are 87 and 88 for F11 and F12, respectively. If any of these keycodes differ on your keyboard, run showkey (though not in a terminal emulator, it must be in a console) and press your keys to display their keycodes. Then after you've saved changes to /etc/sysctl.conf, run:

sudo sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf

to activate them. Also, with this method you should uninstall mouseemu as it will conflict with your new settings:

sudo aptitude remove mouseemu

Now you're all set to enter the GUI, so type sudo shutdown now -r to reboot. I hope I didn't forget anything...

Coming up next, Part IV - Configuring Stuff. Be there or be square!

Part I - Pre-Installation
Part II - Installing the Base System
Part IV - Configuring Stuff
Part V - Bugs & Quirks