Well, I got Slackware just about like I wanted it, so I figured it was time to dump it and try something else. So now I've got Debian sitting here. Here are the problems: 1. Fonts are ugly. They're antialiased and stuff, but the fonts themselves are just UGLY! 2. I can't get the nvidia driver installed. The installer says "Unable to determine the NVIDIA kernel module filename" when I try to install it. [edited by - BradDaBug on April 11, 2004 1:01:30 AM]

1) get ghostscript font pack (donno the URL, google for it)

2) get the newest nvidia installer and don''t answer yes if you are asked to use a precompiled one. let the installer compile the module for ya. requires a gcc build environment but if you are missing it ''apt-get install gcc'' is your friend

Yeah, I had problems like that with the nivida drivers... Unfortunately, I don''t even remember what I did to fix it... It definately involves having your kernel source, though, and having a symlink in /usr/src/linux point to your current kernel''s source directory. Either that or you can specifiy at the command line where the kernel source is.

http://chaos.webhop.org

I got the nvidia drivers working. I downloaded the Debian nvidia driver packages (kernel-common, kernel-source, and glx). I installed kernel-common, then build a new package from the kernel-source package, installed that package, and installed the glx package (I think that's the order I did it). Pretty similar to how I got the nvidia drivers working back in the day before there was that installer.

I played with the fonts a little bit and they look a little better. I told Mozilla to use 92dpi fonts instead of system default and now it looks better but it's not antialiased. Everything else uses antialiased fonts that look fair, but still not great.

I'm not sure exactly which version I'm using. I downloaded the 20 mb CD image and installed "testing."

BTW, Debian seems a bit better than the last time I installed it about a year ago. It looks like it detected all my hardware.

Edit: Ok, I just apt-get'ed mozilla and it installed xft. Now the fonts are anti-aliased and it looks 200% better.

Edit again: I'm having trouble with the command prompt again. The export PS1=blah blah thing isn't working. When I manually type in the export it works, but when I first start the terminal from the little gnome toolbar the prompt is just "sh-2.05b$" instead of the cool prompt. If I CTRL+ALT+Fn to get to real terminal it works, ls is colored, everything. So I guess gnome-terminal isn't reading .bashrc for some reason. Anyone know how to fix that?

Edit yet again: Never mind, I found the answer here. Now I've just got to add Windows to the bootup menu and everything ought to work.

Edit #3: Whenever I try to compile something that uses pthreads, I get unresolved reference errors to pthread functions. Anyone know anything about that?

[edited by - BradDaBug on April 11, 2004 5:36:29 PM]

i had the same problem with pthreads. when you link the prog (im assuming you are using gcc), make sure that -pthread is on the command line. this causes the linker to include the library the pthread functions are defined in.

I''m using a makefile to compile, though. I''m not compiling something I wrote, I''m compiling something else (the opende tests, actually).