The Business of Prayer

Posted on December 4, 2013 by ehurst

Context is everything.

A key element to all my religious babble on this blog is recognizing that you cannot blindly inject your own cultural prejudices into the process of reading the Bible. Scripture arises from a radically different mindset than can be found anywhere in the world today. You might get by with your current world view and try to make sense of what the Bible says, but you’ll get an awful lot of it wrong, if not in detail, then a misunderstanding on a fundamental level that reaps a harvest of very many errors.

Western Christians are just getting by, if they remain Western in their understanding of the Bible. They talk about prayer; they do have a grasp of some elements because, for all we could tell, God does answer a portion of their prayers. And we cannot dispute that a great many of those who claim the label of “Christian” do manifest evidence of having been spiritually born. Rather than catalog all their errors and all the different ways people get it wrong, let’s break fresh to the truth.

Prayer is addressing yourself to the Godhead. So much is obvious. What most people get wrong is the flavor of this whole thing. Consistently and without fail, God portrayed Himself as an Eastern potentate. More specifically, He dressed His revelation in terms of Ancient Near Eastern feudalism. While ANE feudalism does overlap the version that arose in Medieval Europe, there are numerous radical differences. For the ANE lord, his real treasure was His people.

Some of them were servants, slaves or even hired hands. It’s not that they had no stake in things, but He had no real stake in them. Don’t get hung up on Western values here; this is the default for life on this earth. When Western Civilization collapses, it will have been one of the shortest lived and easily forgotten. God says He has slaves and you won’t get very far if you reject His way of doing things within His creation.

He also has family — a vast tribal extended family. He has the authority to adopt people into His family and vest them with His kinship. In essence, every human on this plane of existence who ever gained spiritual awakening was adopted into His family. That didn’t mean they were automatically good and righteous, but they had something others didn’t. They were family, not slaves, servants or mere employees. There is the potential to gain a vested interest in the operations of His domain because they are in a position to understand things non-family could never comprehend.

When the folks without living spirits pray to God, it’s all a matter of custom and protocol. The ritual is the thing, though you can be sure this Lord can read their minds, too. Still, they can ask for things consistent with their status and mission in the household. How well they understand all that has a lot to do with the results of such prayer.

Spiritual folks are family. Ritual is just window dressing; it helps to keep the head oriented properly. However, the real issue is communion with your Father. The fundamental purpose is to consult with Him on His wishes, and to share frankly your own. It’s a conversation, and He’s got all the time in the world for you. Indeed, once He plants His Spirit inside yours, the conversation never stops. But we remain creatures of flesh and our flesh needs a little something extra. You can train the devil out of your flesh, but it remains flesh. So we engage in rituals to help our limited intellect stay on course and not forget what it’s all about in the first place.

Our Lord has business in His creation. Like any other ANE sheikh, He works through His family as proxies of a sort. Some are better representatives than others. He assigns missions and tasks based on His true grasp of what we are plus a measure of His incomprehensible whims. He doesn’t need your prayers; He loves the time with you, though. You need the prayers. You need them to help you stay focused on the mission.

If you look for things to proceed as they do between folks in any part of Western society, you’ll never understand and you’ll never enter His inner circle in any sense. I’ve already spilled billions of electrons explaining the mission part, and I’m sure I’ll be moved to do more, but the point here is for you to gain an image of praying as conversation with God. Yes, He most certainly does speak to you, but your receptor for His voice is not in your head; it’s in your spirit. So you have to do the work of making your soul obey and conform to what your spirit knows. So much as you can bring that about, that much will you sense that you understand when He speaks.

On the one hand, He is holy and so far above you that it’s beyond comprehension. On the other hand, He willingly sacrificed Himself to make it possible to adopt you into His family. At times you’ll scream and cry, rant and rave, and He can take it all without responding in kind. At other times you’ll wonder at the unspeakable privilege of just being in the same world where He is pleased to manifest His divine presence. There are no boundaries to this in the sense of what humans normally think in their minds.

It isn’t about changing His mind on something, but changing yours. You are trying to enslave your mind to His will, and in the process cry out for some sanity so you’ll have the will to act in His interests. Yes, I pray for things and He grants them, things that you could justly view as frivolous luxuries. It’s not because of some magical authority or superior grasp of divine will, but it’s more a matter of His whims. There are plenty more things I’ve requested that I don’t ever receive from His hand. After a time of concerted effort trying to understand His ways, you get used to how His whims work — that is, how they work in your life, not necessarily anyone else’s life. To the degree you can get your intellect and the rest of your human self to surrender and obey His will, sight unseen, you gain a better standing in the sense of knowing you belong there in His Presence.

How you go about prayer and hold this conversation isn’t the point, but that you do it is the whole point.

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Debian: Try It; You’ll Like It (Part 7)

Posted on December 4, 2013 by ehurst

(The updated version of this series can be found here (gone).)

The folks who make computer hardware aren’t always on good terms with the folks who develop Linux. You’ll hear both sides blame the other and it really doesn’t matter if what you need is simply to use the hardware you happen to have. Most of the time, Linux will work fine with what you have, but we’ve already seen during installation how it’s not always that simple.

This is particularly the case with graphics hardware made by ATI (Radeon) and NVIDIA. Most of the older hardware by these two giant companies is already going to work as well as it can. Some of the newer stuff requires a little extra work. Fortunately, the folks who make the hardware do provide special drivers for Linux, but the Linux folks aren’t entirely happy with it. Different kinds of Linux can make it hard or easy to use. Debian folks have made it pretty easy.

There are two paths for your Radeon graphics on Debian. First: It’s possible to get a reasonable performance by installing the special package firmware-linux-nonfree and rebooting. This is simply another case of Debian’s internal politics of development that these drivers aren’t already installed by default. You can find an explanation here with links to some of the different hardware drivers covered by this policy. Still, this is the recommended way for most systems.

Second: If you really must have the latest and greatest, AMD/ATI Radeon is covered with its own page on the Debian Wiki. If you followed the installation instructions at the beginning of these lessons, you shouldn’t have to worry about changing the sources.list file as noted on that page. Follow the instructions for discerning which version of the Radeon cards you have and which version of the Catalyst drivers you need. We are using Wheezy, so that’s the section you use. This page will ask you to use a different tool for installing, so you’ll learn something new. Just open your terminal window, use the same method for obtaining your root credentials as in the previous lesson. Then use your mouse to scrape and paste those commands into your terminal and watch it all go to work.

You’ll need to reboot your computer when it’s all done, so surrender root and exit the terminal and all your other open applications and click the other button next to the XFCE main menu to loguot of your system. One of the options that pops up in the window is “restart” which is what we want to do here.

The instructions for NVIDA drivers are just as easy as for NVIDIA.

Despite claims to the contrary, most folks do notice a difference once the special drivers are installed. Most things on your display will “paint” more quickly onto the screen, and videos run more smoothly. If you are a serious gamer and start trying to run things like the Linux version of Valve’s Steam engine games, you’ll need to do a lot of research, but one of the first things you’ll learn is the necessity of having the latest and greatest video drivers.

The point to remember is that, because the Debian user community is so very large and so used to DIY computer use, you are quite likely to find at least someone offering useful instructions. Often they will make them simple enough that just about anyone who has gotten this far in these lessons can make it work. Depending on what you try to do, you’ll find yourself learning how to compile from the source code your own specialized version of some software.

Part of the reason was hinted at above: the politics of Linux software and how the rest of the world likes to do things. The one greatest strength of Debian is the sheer numerical size of the community, but that is also its greatest weakness because it is also one of the most political branches of Linux development. There is no escaping it, so get used to it. The good part is that there are enough folks who don’t care about the politics that they will help make it possible for you to get what you need.

In the next lesson we’ll look at installing something you simply won’t get from Debian because of software politics, and in the process we’ll use the CLI some more.

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Debian: Try It; You’ll Like It (Part 6)

Posted on December 3, 2013 by ehurst

(The updated version of this series can be found here (gone).)

The Chromium extensions we installed do several things. Ghostery and Adblock work together to block the worst advertising. Ghostery may need some fine-tuning so you can use certain features on some sites — posting comments, for example. Or perhaps you have a WordPress blog; Ghostery blocks your Gravatar icons by default. You can learn how to turn off blocking for whatever you like. Adblock allows you the option of picking out something you don’t like and adding it to your private list for blocking. You can block things specific to each website or for every website. It does require a bit of study to use it correctly, but it’s worth the time. Take a look at the configuration options that display when you click those icons in your browser’s window frame.

Click & Clean does something similar to Bleachbit, but does it while your browser is still open. Some websites are notorious for ignoring the protocols and rules about tracking, and a few outright lie about what they do. After visiting some websites, you need to run Click & Clean as soon as you leave. That would be most major news media outlets, anything that pretends to be like a magazine (ZDNet, Ars Technica, Wired, etc.) and especially social media sites like Facebook. If you log into such sites, always log out to leave it and always run Click & Clean after you close that tab in your browser or go to another page. Once you have set the options you want deleted, you can simply click the icon, then select “Clear private data.”

In recent months the concept of encryption has made the technology news quite often. The idea is to prevent outside parties reading some portion of what you send and receive over the Internet. Some of this is built into your browser, encrypting your “session” — the collected interactions you have with a particular website at one time. That would be especially important if you do any of your banking online. By default, Chrome/Chromium does not encrypt your passwords for you, so you shouldn’t allow the browser to store them directly. However, you can get Chromium to interact with an encrypted “key server” running on your own computer.

The basic software is already installed by default on virtually every Linux computer, Debian included. It’s called GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard) or simply “gpg” for short. It’s a CLI program by default and takes some effort to learn. However, you can install a graphical front end that gives you some control over how it acts, and adds a few components behind the scenes that you can link up with Chromium. The package is called seahorse and you can install that now if you plan to use it. We’ve already covered installing packages. Often, once installed you will need to reboot your computer to make it run properly.

Once you have logged back into your user account and on the desktop again, the server is already running in the background. You probably don’t even need to interact with seahorse directly. Logging into your account should log you into the key server, as well; it’s the same password by default.

Now we have to tell Chromium specifically to use this service. We need to change how Chromium is launched from the icons and menus. You may use any or all of these three, depending on your tastes and how you do things.

1. Create a desktop launcher: Right-click on the desktop background and choose “Create Launcher.” A small window pops up and you can choose the name that will display with the icon. A nifty feature here is that if you start typing “Chromium” the interface will offer to finish the job for you. A secondary line drops down from this input box and offers to create a Chromium launcher; click on that and let it fill in the blanks for you. No need to hunt down the icon or anything else. However, we need to change the “command” part. Click in that box and slide down to the right-hand end (i.e., try the END key). Hit the SPACE bar and add this text:

--password-store=gnome

It so happens seahorse is part of the GNOME desktop project, but it works fine on XFCE. Hit the “Save” button and close this dialog.

2. Change the launcher on the bottom panel: Get the bottom panel to pop up. If you have changed your default browser to Chromium, it will be associated with the icon that looks like a globe. Hover the mouse over it and the pop-up text will say something about default browser. Right-click and select “Properties.” In the window that opens up, along the right side, the last icon at the bottom allows you to edit the launcher. Click that and open another window that looks identical to the launcher configuration for the desktop. Use the same string of text and simply paste at the end of the “command” line.

3. Edit the XFCE main menu: This is a little more convoluted. Right click anywhere on the top panel and select “Panel >” to open another configuration submenu, from which you select “Panel Preferences.” This opens a configuration window that has multiple tabs. Select “Items” and see the list of what is installed to the panel. Select “Applications Menu” and click the next to last icon on the right side to open yet another configuration menu window labeled “Applications Menu.” Toward the bottom is a button that says “Edit Menu” — click that. It will take a moment for the menu editor to pop up. From the left side list window select “Internet.” The center column window should list what’s on the menu for that heading. One of them will be “Chromium Web Browser.” On the far right select “Properties” and you’ll get the same launcher configuration window, so apply the same change. (This is not possible on Debian Wheezy. Turns out you’d have to hunt down something not offered by Debian and it’s not simple to install.)

From now on, when you start Chromium from any launcher, it will automatically connect to the seahorse key server and store your passwords there. Now you can go back and change the configuration in Chromium under “Settings” in the menu and enable saving passwords. This same method works with the commercial Google Chrome browser, but because of how Google builds it, you may experience somewhat buggy behavior. That is, it might not always load the passwords from seahorse for some unknown reason. Chromium tends to be more consistent on this.

Seahorse always works for encrypting files and even email. There are several good tutorials covering this and we have no need to duplicate that here. Try this one for general instructions.

There is one small item we need to fix before this is all done. Because of some peculiar defaults in the way these things are packaged, we need to change the way the key server is configured. In Unix Land, this sort of thing isn’t stored in some arcane database, but simple text files. We are going to change one of those text files so that this key server made for GNOME recognizes XFCE as a proper environment in which to run. You’ll need to open that terminal window again. This time we’ll also raise our authority level to root by using the su command:

su root

After you hit enter, you’ll be told to enter root’s password, but you’ll be typing blindly. This prevents anyone looking over your shoulder from seeing that password so easily. Once you succeed in claiming root authority, I’m going to ask you to scrape the following text with your mouse/pointer and then mouse-paste it into your root terminal session; it’s all one line.

sed -i.bak 's/OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;/OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;XFCE;/g' /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-keyring-*.desktop

Very often you’ll go looking online for instructions to fix something and it will be delivered in just that way. Some complex commandline instructions to the system that you need to copy very precisely must be pasted in as root. In essence what this does is changes a handful of configuration files so that they all say that the GNOME key server can run on XFCE. Now type in exit twice; once to surrender to root credentials and a second time to close the window.

Important note: Almost everything you could possibly need to know about running Debian is already posted somewhere on the Internet. There are no secrets, but some issues are rather obscure. You will need to take the time to learn how to use your favorite search engine to find that information. The Debian user community is one of the largest of all the various development branches of Linux. A considerable amount is provided by the Debian project itself, but is often terse and assumes a higher level of knowledge than most newbies bring to the task. It’s worth the investment to learn the Debian approach to things.

In the next lesson we will cover peculiar hardware driver issues the Debian Way.

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Debian: Try It; You’ll Like It (Part 5)

Posted on December 2, 2013 by ehurst

(The updated version of this series can be found here (gone).)

First, a pop quiz. You will need a package called “gdebi”; based on the previous lesson, install it as you wish. It will bring with it a few other packages as dependencies. If you are using apt on the CLI, gdebi is the full name of the package. Once you have it installed, this lesson continues. You may also want the package called “ttf-mscorefonts-installer” — a collection of fonts particularly well suited for Internet use. It comes with a license.

The problem with surfing the Net is that most people aren’t paranoid enough. We have no reason to be fearful, but the average computer user is entirely too trusting of what’s on the other end of that network connection. Despite the commercial reality of being in a dependent status as a user connecting to the Internet, once you are on, you are among equals. The theory was explained long ago here. While a majority of commercially owned systems on the Net assume a highly manipulative stance as the norm, you have a significant advantage, in that it’s your computer. You get to set some of the rules for interaction with websites, and there isn’t much the servers can do without simply refusing to serve up the information you requested.

That refusal is, for the time being, quite rare. The folks on the other end will whine and play mind games to seek an advantage, but in the end, their income depends on delivering the content. They will have a hard time picking you out in the crowd of surfers and harassing on you. The time it takes to make detailed configurations to block those who won’t kiss their feet is often more trouble than they are willing to take. Virtually the entire Internet is designed for the statistically dominant operating system plugged into the Internet: Windows. Because they are a business, Microsoft will grant other businesses some advantages over you, the user. There is a sense in which running Windows means the operating system is not the product being sold; the Windows user is the product sold to vendors and advertisers. By running Debian, you turn the tables and regain control. You become an equal partner; you are running the same operating system as a significant number of servers on the Net.

A part of the battle to preserve your privacy is the web browser. There are dozens and each is better at some things than others. Choosing Chromium is a compromise, balancing several priorities. It won’t offer everything you might want, but it also doesn’t force you to accept just anything the advertisers and other creeps want to throw at you. However, in order to work at all, browsers by their very nature will swallow a lot of data (putting it into a “cache”) that isn’t really necessary for you to consume stuff offered on the Net. It’s stuff they believe will help them make money and is not at all good for you. We will use other software with the browser, and some if it in the browser, to help us preserve some advantage against them.

But don’t rely too heavily on the software to do it all for you. This is not a war where you can fire off your super missiles and forget about the target. It requires a mindset of responsible watchfulness. If the Internet is important to you, it’s worth as much time and attention as driving on a crowded freeway. You might be using some pretty wimpy hardware, but Linux in general, and Debian in particular is like driving a tank with modular armor. You have to consciously install the right amount of armor to protect without interfering with your normal operations. No one can give you a pre-packaged savvy to match your particular behavior, but we can put you in a position to survive until you can make your own way — the very nature of DIY computing.

The biggest single issue is various attempts at tracking you. I mentioned how Chromium as a browser grants you slightly more control than it’s brother, Google’s Chrome browser. They are almost like twins in how they work on your computer; the differences tend to be rather subtle. What works on one generally works on the other, so you have access to all the same extensions that provide control and security on the Net. We won’t take the time to explore all the specific dangers from that sort of tracking, but simply assert your inherent right to decide. Once you have Chromium installed (previous lesson), there are adjustments you need to make for comfort and security.

You can find Chromium in the XFCE main menu under “Internet.” Launch it and adjust the window size and location to suit your tastes (we assume you know you can drag the whole thing by clicking and holding onto the top of the window frame). In the upper right corner of the window is an icon consisting of three parallel horizontal lines; this the main menu for Chromium. Select “Settings”; this will open a new tab in the browser. You can take a look at what’s visible so far. The top item, “Sign in” is a reference to your Google accounts if you have any. I highly recommend you not do this until you actually need to use it for some specific reason. We shouldn’t put much trust in Google any more than every other predatory advertiser. Most of what’s visible there for settings you can figure out by playing with them.

Unless you have a preferred homepage somewhere already, I recommend you choose either Start Page or DuckDuckGo — both of these are search engines famous for preserving your privacy. The first one uses Google’s search engine but doesn’t let Google track you. The Duck is based on Yandex (another good one you probably never heard of) and preserves your privacy just the same.

Toward the bottom of the page, is a button to make Chromium your default browser. Good idea, but it doesn’t always work properly on XFCE. You can set that in the XFCE Settings menu > Preferred Applications. If you don’t see Chromium listed, just click “other” and type into the little window “chromium-browser” (as always, without the quotation marks). If Chromium continues to nag you, just select the option to quit asking you.

Below that is “Show advanced settings…” Click on that. The first item displayed now is “Privacy.” Click “Content settings…” next. A smaller window opens, and I suggest for the first item that you select “Keep local data only until I quit my browser.” This has nothing to do with saving your passwords, but just about everything else websites inject into your system when you visit their pages. You don’t have much choice with images and scripts, but you can be pretty restrictive on the other items listed there. I suggest you choose “Click to play” on plug-ins. If you want to see a Flash video, you can click it. Otherwise, you’ll be distracted by busy advertising images you don’t really need to see. When you’re done with that set of items, close the window by clicking “done.” Then take a look at the list of checkboxes below the privacy heading. Without going into all the details, I recommend you de-select the first two items and select the rest.

You can enable autofill and passwords, but I recommend against it. If you have a really large number of passwords for a large number of sites where you have to login, consider using a password safe. I don’t trust any of the online providers, but the alternative won’t fit in this lesson. You’ll have to wait for the next one. For now, I recommend you disable that feature.

Take a moment to look at the font settings under “Web content.” You can customize in detail, and most people find the default fonts not the best (which is why I recommended you install the MS web fonts), and the size is typically too large. If you click the customize button, a small window opens to allow detailed settings. When finished, you can close that small window. Moving on down the list of advanced settings, you probably should enable “Check for server certificate revocation” and disable running background apps down at the bottom of this page of settings. When you are finished, you can close that tab and the settings will be automatically saved.

Go back up to the main menu for Chromium and select Tools > Extensions. You won’t have much, but there is a link to the Google Chrome store for extensions. Not all of them are free, so pay attention. There will be a search input box on the page displayed there, and I recommend you search for and install three items: Adblock (not Adblock Plus), Ghostery and Click & Clean. A fourth nifty add-on is the DuckDuckGo search button. Instead of entering your search terms in the URL bar at the top of the browser, you click the duck icon and it opens its own search window. The search results will open up in a new tab. All of these extensions come with their own tutorials. Ghostery has a configuration wizard (hint: click the “all” option on the block list). If you don’t understand why they matter or how they work, you’ll simply have to take the time to read up on it.

There are some other security tools and you’ll get the feeling they tend to overlap somewhat, yet none of them does it all. One final secure surfing addition requires that you install a package made for Debian, but the one included with Debian is a little out of date: BleachBit. Using your new DuckDuckGo search tool, open the search dialog and enter “bleachbit download”. Ignore the “sponsored link” in the yellow background and notice what comes up first: a page on a website called “Source Forge.” In general, something you get from that site is likely safe and sane, but it so happens that BleachBit is especially trustworthy. You can click on the link to that page and simply wade through the series of pages clicking the links to download the Linux version for your Debian system. It will be listed on the download page as “Debian 7 (Wheezy)” — get use to seeing variations of this. What you get will be dropped into your Download folder, which is in your home directory.

This will be a “deb” package and it’s not very large. If you open Thunar (file manager) and click on the link to your Download folder, you’ll see an icon for a package and the name “bleachbit” in part of the text. The package is made for Debian and at the beginning of this lesson we installed the utility for handling this without the commandline, which can get very complicated very quickly. The gdebi utility saves you a lot of heartache; just double-click the package icon and you’ll be presented with a window demanding your root credentials password. Once you’ve given that password, another window opens. Give it time to process. You may see a notice that an earlier version of the package is available, but we knew that already. We want the latest and greatest version. Click the big “install” button and let it do it’s job. Several things will flash on your display, but eventually it all settles down and that button changes to “reinstall” — that means you are done. Close that window.

Bleachbit shows up in your XFCE main menu under “System” — you aren’t likely to ever need the link for “Bleachbit as Administrator” so you can ignore that and run the first one. A small window opens up, and a smaller one pops up on top for configuration options. There is nothing there that needs your attention so close that little pop-up and look at the main application window. Bleachbit allows you to choose what sort of things it will remove. This is called a “cache cleaner” — it deletes all the tracking junk websites use to invade your privacy. For the most part, you should be able to identify the various things listed in that long column on the left side of the window. One of the first items is “Chromium”. You should select everything except Passwords and Search engines. If you intend using Debian’s “Iceweasel” (Firefox) browser, you can select similar options under the “Firefox” heading. You probably won’t need much else.

Notice that Bleachbit has two large icons on the upper left corner. The first is to inspect the contents of your various browser caches; the second deletes them. Quite honestly, you should run this every time you close your browser, several times a day.

More safe surfing the next time.

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Debian: Try It; You’ll Like It (Part 4)

Posted on December 1, 2013 by ehurst

(The updated version of this series can be found here (gone).)

Debian won’t force you to use the commandline; it will entice you with the most opulent provision for those who dare to learn the magic of the Linux commandline.

Debian organizes the software offerings into packages and carefully tracks their dependencies. You could justly accuse the Debian managers of overly fragmenting their packages, but it does give the advantage of precise control. The best way is to use the commandline. That makes it a little tough on those just learning Linux, so you get a little hand-holding for now.

You could do just about the whole job of package management and updates from the graphical interface. In the XFCE main menu, select System > Synaptic. You’ll need to provide your root credentials to do anything with this, so be careful. Synaptic offers frequent warnings and information windows. Make it a habit to read them. You are unlikely to understand everything you see at first, but give yourself time and eventually it will all make good sense to you. One of the secrets of learning Linux is realizing that you might read the same thing a dozen times before it starts to stick. Virtually everyone who persists will get it sooner or later.

Synaptic opens up a bit small by default, so hit the second button on the upper right corner of the window frame to expand it full size. It is organized like a lot of listing applications: a left-hand column of categories, an upper window of listed items and a lower window for details of those items. There are several packages I recommend everyone add that are not installed by default.

One of them is the Chromium browser. This is the Open Source version of Google Chrome. You can have the latter if you wish, but it comes with some stuff added by Google that makes it both a little more slick and also a little more likely to betray your trust. It’s just smart security to keep on hand more than one browser. Not only do various websites prefer one or another browser, but different browsers by design offer different types of control to the user. The major reason for choosing Debian in particular, and Linux in general, is to take back control of your computer. Let’s install Chromium.

First, let’s make sure the package list is up to date. Along the top of Synaptic is a toolbar with large icons. The first one on the left says “Reload” with some appropriate symbol; you should click that first. Most of the interface is “grayed out” and a pop-up window informs you what is happening, downloading the fresh lists of what’s available. When Synaptic is ready, everything goes back to normal.

You can scroll down the list window interminably and in alphabetical order, or you can shorten your search. The icon that looks like a magnifying glass allows you to search for key words. Click that and in the dialog that opens up, type in “chromium” (without the quotation marks, of course). The top window will have a much shorter list now. Typically, the first item in the list is exactly what we seek. Notice the naming convention for the package: “chromium-browser”. There will be several variations on that name, but we are going to depend on the system to handle the packages on which Chromium depends. Click on the little square in the left-hand column of the list and a pop-up window allows you to select one of several options. We want to “Mark for installation” — it won’t install immediately because you may want a lot of other stuff. However, another window will pop up informing you of what dependencies will be added. Just make the obvious choices, click the buttons and the window will close.

We pretend for the moment that we are done. Back up to the toolbar with large icons we see “Apply” — click this and watch as more little pop-up windows inform you of what is happening. When the pop-up offers you the option of closing it (the button at the bottom becomes active saying “Close”), do so.

You’ll notice also the button between “Reload” and “Apply” is marked “Mark All Upgrades.” If you open Synaptic, say every week, you can click this after reloading and it should tell you if something significant is chosen. This is one way of keeping your system updated, but it lacks some of the fine-toothed control you’ll learn to love later. Enough for now that you know it can be done this way and most of the time there are no hiccups. The most frequent difficulty comes when certain kinds of packages require a little extra work from you to update. That’s why we have the commandline. You can do it from Synaptic, but it’s simply not as reliable that way, nor can it be made as reliable as the commandline.

Linux is like any other Unix: it’s a commandline system. Some time ago a pretty face was added, but it runs on top of the underlying operating system. Linux itself seldom demands much from your hardware and does so at the lowest level possible. Linux behind-the-scenes is rock solid and reliable because of simplicity itself. Adding a graphical user interface (GUI) inevitably requires talking to a wide range of hardware in a wide range of configurations, and some of them are frankly very poorly done. So while an awful lot of work as gone into the Linux GUI, there will always be some problems. By the way, we call this GUI “X” — short for the X Server. When things don’t happen to work perfectly, you can still get an awful lot done on the commandline interface (CLI). Debian in particular offers a very well thought out set of CLI packaging. In theory, you could do almost everything without X at all, and still have everything the GUI offers — music, videos, office applications, email and even surf most of the Internet. Your author has gone months when the only system available was not powerful enough to run a GUI, and did all computing from a Debian CLI.

When you start reading Linux tutorials, you’ll see references to commandline, CLI, terminal and console. For the most part, they are all the same. That is, you open a window which offers a commandline. There are several different types. However, the term “console” typically refers to operating without X at all.

You recall at the bottom of your XFCE desktop was a disappearing toolbar. One of the items on there by default looks like an old style computer monitor with a black screen. If you hover your mouse over this, it may say something about the commandline. Click on that. What you’ll see is a very plain window with some text displayed in the upper left corner. The text may be cryptic to you, but it indicates the user account followed by the system’s name for itself (“host name”). Then there is a sort of symbol marking what is called the “prompt” — the spot after which anything you type will show up. You could type in something crazy and accidentally mangle the way it operates, so I’ll ask you to be patient and type only what you see in this lesson until we have time to introduce more about the CLI itself.

For now, let’s learn how to manage packages the same as we did with Synaptic. Debian worked out a fine system some years ago called “apt”. There are a series of commands with options related to using that term. First, let’s type in the equivalent of reloading the package list. Type letter for letter what you see, and realize that you can use the BKSP, DEL, right and left arrow keys and edit what you type:

apt-get update

Notice the space in there, because this tells the apt-get command what to do. Hit ENTER. You’ll see the system processing the command, checking the various places where it looks for package lists. Then the command prompt will return and wait for the next command. So we type this and hit ENTER:

apt-get upgrade

Instead of updating the lists, we are telling apt to check if anything needs upgrading. Depending on random circumstance, it’s likely you may see a response with a list of things showing in an indented block of text, and an option to select yes (y) or no (n). Obviously you should hit “y” and let it upgrade any packages that need it. It’s highly unlikely to cause any problems at this point.

Otherwise, we need to proceed with adding another few packages you’ll probably want but don’t know you’ll need. Those who surf the Internet may have noticed that, despite all our efforts to move away from some types of media display, a very large portion of the Internet still clings to bad ideas. One of those is the Adobe Flash Player. You can decide you don’t want it and no one will blame you, but most people find it almost necessary because too much of what they want on the Net is still in the Flash format.

Debian’s apt will allow you to search the list of packages using specific search terms. The command is a little different, but you’ll probably figure out what it means. We want apt to search the cache of package listing for something related to the Flash Player, but the list would be very long still. I’ll give you little hint based on the package naming conventions:

apt-cache search flashplugin

Calling it “flashplugin” narrows it down quite a bit. In this shorter list, you will see an item labeled flashplugin-nonfree. This simply tells you that Flash Player is not “free” in the sense of Open Source, where you would be free to change the code. Adobe controls their code tightly, so we have to accept it as is. So we want to install this, but right now I want to show you something useful for operating on the commandline. You don’t always have to type everything out by hand.

Part of the X server protocols is something we call “mouse-paste” — you can drag your mouse/pointer across a section of text displayed almost anywhere and the mouse picks it up in its own buffer, separate from the clipboard (cut, copy and paste) offered in almost every GUI. The mouse buffer will hold that text and you can paste it by clicking the middle button. If you have only two buttons, click them both simultaneously and it should work the same. Thus, you can drag your mouse across the package name “flashplugin-nonfree” and hold it in the mouse buffer. Then type this much:

apt-get install

Leave a space at the end of that. Now place your mouse close to the cursor where you typed that and click the middle button. It should paste the package name behind the stuff you typed so you can hit ENTER and it will try to install the package. (Hint: If you are reading instructions like this on the same computer where you are using those instructions, you can mouse-paste the commands, however long and complex, from the browser to your terminal.) You’ll get a brief warning about licensing, but as you probably know, you don’t have much choice if you want Flash Player. Just pay attention to the prompts. During installation of software of this sort, where some outside agency controls the licensing, you’ll run into all sorts of notices, some requiring you to say “OK” specifically. When you see such a screen and there’s an “OK” at the bottom, just hit the TAB key to activate that and then ENTER. Otherwise you’ll get prompts for y and n, or similar options.

At the very least you should find the processing of Flash Player installation to be a little entertaining. It’s pretty convoluted but the thing downloads and double checks itself for all its parts, then installs. Once it’s done, you’ll get the prompt back. You now have Flash Player and all your browsers should be able to find it.

You can use the menu of this terminal window to close it, but the older orthodox method is to type exit at the prompt, then hit ENTER. It will go away. That’s all for this lesson.

(Note to readers: These tutorials are being collected for a book I’ll be offering for free. I’ve already made a few minor edits to previous posts in this series, so double check if you have critiques.)

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Job 18

Posted on November 30, 2013 by ehurst

We begin to understand Job’s visitors do not grasp what parables are, and do not comprehend symbolic language. God has always preferred parable as the means to communicate to mankind because it winnows out the spiritually dead. Only those with a spiritual awareness can receive the parabolic message. Jesus was not doing anything new when He explained to His disciples that parables were the proper means to teach truth that is beyond the human intellect. This merely confirms Job’s assessment that this trio of visitors were not spiritually aware, but had only their human reason to rely on, and it wasn’t enough.

Bildad is palpably angry at the insulting implication that he and his friends are not equipped to grasp reality. He warns Job to mind his manners before his elders or keep his mouth shut. Bildad asks just who is the senseless wild beast here. Is it they, as Job seems to suggest, or is it Job who wildly tears at himself in frustration? Does Job expect the created order of things to be changed just for him?

Then Bildad launches into a litany of parables, figures of speech about what happens to the wicked. He seems to take them rather literally and uses the dire picture to try scaring Job into repenting. The whole thing is rather nice, but wholly irrelevant to the case before him. This is false reciprocation logic: He assumes that because God does not favor the wicked, only the wicked are without His worldly blessings. It doens’t work the same both directions. Even in modern times we see how this turns logic on its head. The wicked do indeed suffer as he describes, but all too often not literally, not in this life. Instead, the righteous often suffer for no just cause. Perhaps that has happened all too often under Bildad’s own leadership as an elder, and it would embarrass him to admit it.

Either way, we note that Bildad makes the common false assumption that bad things in this world happen only to bad people. That has never been true.

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Debian: Try It; You’ll Like It (Part 3)

Posted on November 30, 2013 by ehurst

(The updated version of this series can be found here (gone).)

Linux is an implementation of the Unix computer technology; a type of Unix, if you will.

In Unix Land, everything is a file. Every bit of hardware that the kernel recognizes is treated as a file, too. So while Linux can recognize multiple hard drives, they aren’t listed as they would be in Windows using single letters of the alphabet. When you go hunting through your system, the various kinds of drives are listed under a “device” folder. You won’t see “C:” and “D:” and so forth. You are more like to see “/dev/sda” and “/dev/sdb”. Please notice that most folks use the terms “folder” and “directory” interchangeably.

Meanwhile, the root of the file system is not designated by a letter, but the forward slash symbol by itself: / — standing at the front of any string of letters and numbers representing parts of the rest of the file system. Thus, any location within the file system would start with the root (/) followed by the various sub-directories by which things are organized. There won’t be a “Linux” folder like you have a “Windows” folder, or “Program Files” because the Unix concept is a little different. You’ll see the root of the file system branching off in things like “/usr” and “/home” and so forth. Rather than bog down with all the mind-numbing details (this is a decent tutorial), we’ll focus for now on that last item — /home.

On your XFCE desktop by default is an icon labeled “Home”. That’s your “home” in the file system. You own that stuff and can do pretty much what you like with it, because the rest of the system is protected from what goes on there. If you double-click that desktop icon, you’ll get a pretty simple file manager window, and this file manager is called Thunar (no, I had nothing to do with all these funny names). As with any other graphical system, you can either drag the corners or sides to get a different size (the pointer changes shape to indicate it). On the left is a column listing the most common places inside your home directory that most people visit. Technically, the location of your home within the file system is “/home/” followed by your login name. Mine says “/home/ed/” — notice we put the forward slash between each directory label (instead of the Microsoft “back slash”). It’s not absolutely necessary to put the trailing slash on there, but it’s technically precise to designate that it’s not a file, but a folder with more stuff inside it. Also, in the standard Linux jargon, you’ll often see it written as “$HOME” — this is how we indicate a system variable. It translates to “home” for whomever has a home folder on any system. You may also see the abbreviation “~/” (tilde slash).

There are also a lot folders and files you don’t always see. They aren’t secret, just kept out of the way of normal operations. So to make them “hidden” in that sense, we place a period (or “dot”) at the beginning of the name so we don’t have to look at it all the time. All your personal configurations are kept in folders and files with dots in front of them — “dot files”. If you want to see them, in the menu of Thunar click on View > Show Hidden Files so that you place a checkmark in front of that menu item. Then you’ll see displayed in the window a considerably larger number of icons. As with any other graphical file manager, Thunar can be adjusted to change how things are displayed. I prefer a detailed list, but that may not be your cup of tea. Explore the menu and settings and decide how it works for you.

One of the items I always set in choosing what columns to display in that list view is adding the “permissions” column (View > Configure Columns and checkmark “Permissions”). In Unix Land we assign permissions to the file system and they are strictly enforced by the kernel. That’s one of the reasons Linux tends to be so stable and secure: The system tightly restricts who can do what with the various files. Because the administrator account (“root”) can do anything at all, we avoid logging in with those credentials until necessary, lest by accident we delete something important. Unlike other operating systems, root can delete the whole thing while the system is running. There are good reasons for this, to include you as owner having full authority over your own system, but we won’t cover that in detail right now. Instead, just keep in mind that it requires root login credentials to do anything to the system, so we always run the system as a common user with limited power to mess things up.

If you really want to understand it in depth, try this tutorial. For now, we focus on the most basic concept. Unix is designed for multiple users, so even if you are on your own home computer and you are the only user, the file system still assumes multiple users. Every file on the system has three basic types of permissions based on the various roles on the system. Every file is owned by somebody, and in regards to file controls, we call them the “user” (u). Every user belongs to several “groups” (g) that may share various levels of permissions on some files. Anyone else who legitimately logs onto the system, but is not a part of your groups, is “others” (o). Thus, the permission controls will include designations with combinations of “ugo” — user/group/others. If you want to designate them all together, it’s “a”. For each of these roles, there are three levels of permission: read (r), write (w) and execute (x). There could also be an absence of any permission. Some files can be turned into executable commands, such as scripts (in Windows Land, that would be “batch files”). The difference is not how the file is labeled, but what permissions it carries. You could simply write a script of commands in a series, save that list of commands to a file, and make it executable by setting the execute permissions to run it as a script. Meanwhile, you could let people run it, but not read it or change the contents. Permissions are specific, not inclusive.

In your file manager window, right click on any file in your home folder (or subfolders). The context menu will include “Properties…” Select that and a dialog opens with several tabs, one of them labeled “Permissions.” You’ll see the various drop down items to change permissions. You’ll also notice the name of the user who owns it, the applicable group name for this particular file, and something about “others.” On each, you can set different levels of permission. You can even lock yourself out of your own files, though you retain the authority to change that because you own it. Group membership is seldom of much interest on a single-user system, but it becomes important when you need permission to do certain things from your user account. Belonging to certain groups allows you to use certain pieces of equipment, because you belong to the same group to which that hardware is assigned. It’s a complex way of controlling what can and cannot happen on the system to avoid losing control of how it works.

For this reason, it is exceptionally difficult for someone to write malware for Linux. There are no secret permissions and hidden controls. When you log into your user account, you can surf the Net and anyone trying to stick files on your system through your browser can only have your user account’s authority. They can’t slip in a script or executable file with full access to the system. The worst they can do is delete some of your personal files — that’s what backups are for — but can’t attack the actual system.

As for security holes in the underlying system, the Debian developers are famous for patching stuff as soon as they discover one. There is a strong system in place just hunting for such problems, and it’s quite rare that the bad guys find them first. Most such holes require someone working directly against you while you are online, and most of us simply don’t have anything they want that bad. It’s too much work for too little return.

In our next lesson, we will learn how to check for updates on Debian.

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Debian: Try It; You’ll Like It (Part 2)

Posted on November 29, 2013 by ehurst

(The updated version of this series can be found here (gone).)

XFCE is a wonderful desktop environment, but it’s not the simplest to configure. There are several items we need to consider for desktop display.

Extra wide displays are popular right now for several reasons, but aside from entertainment, it’s almost wasted space on either end. On my laptop, I have elected to move the main toolbar from the top over to the right side. You can’t just grab it and drag it. You have to right click on the toolbar, choose “Panel” because that’s what it’s actually called in XFCE. Then select panel preferences. You’ll get a dialog window and a dashed red line will outline the panel in question. Click and uncheck the box for locking the panel, then click the selector above it and change from horizontal to vertical. This will cause the panel to stand upright in the center of the screen. Now click-and-drag to move it to the right side (or left if you like), let it attach itself, then put back the check mark to lock the panel in place. I recommend changing the width to 50 pixels for now.

At this point the labels will run sideways. Chances are you really don’t need them once you recognize what the icons mean. Besides, just hover the mouse over any of them and you should get a popup box with the same information. So while you have the dialog open for panel configuration, select the “Items” tab. This is where a lot of configuration details are hidden. You’ll get a small window with a list of what’s on the toolbar. Select any one of the items and you’ll have the option to make detailed choices of how it displays. Click on the first item, “Applications Menu”. From the right side of this dialog, select the fifth button down, which should open the configuration dialog for that item. A new dialog will open and you can de-select the check box for “Show button title” and make the rotated text go away so it takes up less space.

You’ll notice each of the other items on the panel are listed and you can explore the various configuration options there. For example, I don’t use the mail notification in the Notification Area, so I open the config and de-select that. Once you are finished, close the dialog and your panel is ready to use. The disappearing panel at the bottom offers the same set of controls. On my laptop, I leave it set to disappear and pull it up only to use it as a quick-launch panel. You can change what buttons appear. If you know that something in the main menu is an item you will use often enough, you can open the menu from that panel, drag the item down to the other panel — give it a chance to recognize what you are trying to do; be persistent — and drop it where you want it. The panel will eventually open a square where you like. If it turns out you are a little clumsy at this, the drop it anywhere on the panel. Then right click and select “move” to specifically engage that function. You can easily remove buttons you don’t want to use there by right clicking and choosing that from the popup menu.

Back on the main panel, I usually work through the panel configuration submenu to add some items not there by default. I like to have a networking indicator for my wifi. Once added and it shows up on the panel, right click to configure. I change the label to “Wifi” and type in the Linux name for that connection “wlan0” — chances are, if you have a wifi chip on your system, that’s what it will be called. Notice that’s a zero at the end of the label. We’ll learn more about that later. This little tool allows you to see when traffic is moving across your wifi connection. Similar kinds of things can be added, but don’t crowd the panel with things that aren’t important to you. You may need to consider adjusting the width of the panel again if it’s too thickly populated. Narrower means more room for stuff, but harder to see.

Chances are by this time you realize the fonts look clunky. It can easily be much better. In a later lesson we will learn to add Windows-type fonts, but for now, we’ll use what comes with the system by default. In the Applications Menu, select Settings > Settings Manager. Usually the second item is “Appearance.” Open this dialog and click on the “Fonts” tab. Click the box labeled “Enable anti-aliasing” until a checkmark appears. Click the selector below that labeled “Hinting” and choose “full”. Immediately the fonts should look much sharper. You probably won’t need to mess with anything else for now. Go to some of the other tabs at the top and explore what you can do with the color scheme, icon sets, etc. When you are through, you can click the “Overview” button and go back to make more changes under the heading “Window Manager.” Once you add more fonts, you can revisit these settings to change your default fonts displayed onscreen.

Feel free to explore the other options in the Settings Manager. Most people also want to make their pointer/mouse move a little quicker, and it’s not too hard to figure that out. Select that item in the settings overview. For the most part, just increase the acceleration factor and test repeatedly until you are comfortable. You’ll probably change it several times over the first few hours of use until you get it just right. For laptop touchpads, things get complicated very quickly because there is no simple way of handling it. Don’t lose heart; I promise we’ll cover this later in more detail. This is where I remind readers that Linux in general, and Debian in particular, is very much a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) type of computer technology. Sometimes the defaults work fine, but if you want more control, it’s there, you’ll just have to learn a bit. You can only get just so much hand-holding before you are simply on your own. If it really matters to you, learn to fix it. You can’t be lazy with Linux, but the information is most certainly not that hard to find.

Another popular item is the desktop background or wallpaper. Simply right-click on any blank space on the desktop background and select “Desktop Settings.” The dialog offers your background as the first item of business. You can choose from a number of images. If you know where to find them, you can choose from your own collection.

Finding your files is our next lesson.

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The Mythology of Uniformity

Posted on November 28, 2013 by ehurst

As one reader noted, with full consciousness I subject the intellect to the Spirit. The mind was granted by God to serve the Spirit. Western Christianity typically presumes to intellectualize the Spirit, and that’s backwards, because it subjects the Spirit under the flesh. The intellect is carnal, folks; the mind of man is flesh. Redemption of the mind is not through logic and reason, but through subjection to the Spirit. God help you if you can’t distinguish the two.

The concept of efficiency through uniformity is from Hell, not from God. There are times when we persuade men to act in concert for a limited purpose. We do not revel in uniformity as some noble value, but hold it a necessary method on this fallen earth. When men join together in the flesh, it always leads back to the Tower of Babel, to the false powers of the flesh and human arrogance — the boastful pride of human existence. Men joined in the spirit will commune with the Spirit of God in worship. It is a spiritual reflex to set others free to follow their own individual spiritual imperatives.

Perhaps you recognize that the practice of medicine is more art than science. Good medicine is educated guesswork. Give mankind endless resources and time and he will never be able to fully account for the variations and factors. Wise physicians recognize they cannot possibly account for every biological, biochemical, neurological, environmental and other kinds of factor. The wisest of all are conscious of how moral character most certainly affects the medical outcome. They recognize there is a Creator who has the last word, and they don’t patronize people’s attitudes about such things. The regimentation of lawful medical practice is a confining prison on the conscience of real doctors.

Regimentation is nothing more than human laziness, a refusal to deal with natural variations. Bureaucrats love reducing their fellow humans to a collection of ciphers with only the slightest difference so they can be counted and controlled. It is the authority to compel people to conform to whatever the bureaucrat is willing to do, making them mere reflections of his own moral imperfections. This is the foolish reflex of projection writ large and conscious.

The whole point of seeking to respond to your fundamental spiritual apprehension is to discover your unique standing before the God who made you and intimately knows you individually. It includes surrendering to His divine wishes, willing participation in His art of redeeming humanity. We surrender that arrogance of power into His hands and act only with what we rightly control: ourselves. Others must decide for themselves to act in concert or not. We can employ violent force only within the limited things of the spiritual calling. We have a vast supply of precedent, sufficient to estimate how that looks when carried out in divine justice. While we cannot be absolutely certain, we can discern when we have to act to defend something, or die trying. No human life is inherently precious to you, least of all your own. Rather, justice is precious to us, justice as defined by the presence of the Spirit.

Uniformity as an organizing principle usurps the authority of God. As a passing tool for limited purposes, it may well be morally tolerable. The ultimate peace begins with the divine conviction you don’t always know what He wants for others, and that you have no mandate from Heaven to rule that is not accompanied by the evidence of people clamoring for your word on things. Whether they are all idiots is not the point; you do what you must in pursuing the mission of His calling on your life. You can flee that clamor as Christ did because it was not His mission, or because it is not your time to play the shepherd. But if you sense at all the desire to rule, you can be fully certain that impulse is from sin.

Good moral people flee from ruling others, but may well lead them if others insist on following.

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Debian: Try It; You’ll Like It (Part 1)

Posted on November 27, 2013 by ehurst

(The updated version of this series can be found here (gone).)

Lots of folks offer various kinds of guides to installing Debian. This is just one more. Why Debian? It’s easily the single best escape from MS Windows for most computers.

If you are already using Linux, stick with what you know best. To be honest, I used to really love SuSE, but they abandoned long ago everything that serves my needs. I have a strong personal affinity for Red Hat derivatives, but they won’t work properly on my hardware and don’t really do what I want to do. I agree that’s in part because the larger Open Source community tends to be pissy with Red Hat and friends, but I can’t do anything about that. I love Red Hat, but I use Debian because it’s more sane. The point is I want to help you consider sanely whether Debian will serve your purposes.

I’m going to explain what I do to make Debian on my laptop act the way I want. Your wants may well be quite different, but this description may indicate your options are bigger than you thought.

Caveats: As part of this image I’m painting, I make no apology for insisting XFCE is the only desktop worth considering. I’ve written plenty about my disappointment with GNOME and KDE. LXDE isn’t ready for prime time, but might be okay for older and slower machines. You can explore whatever other kinds of GUI you like later on, but I’m not going to lead you there. We will start with the assumption you will find XFCE useable. Further, unless you are running an awful lot of RAM, or you are running heavy server operations we won’t discuss here, there is nothing at all to gain from choosing a 64-bit version. There are also plenty of reasons to prefer 32-bit, most having to do with how so many software projects you are likely to use don’t compile well in 64-bit. Some software won’t even be available for some years to come. Please don’t be misled by all the hype; 32-bit Linux runs fine on machines up to 64GB or RAM and Debian’s installer will choose the right version of the kernel automatically.

That said, go here and click on debian-7.2.0-i386-xfce-CD-1.iso to download what I recommend*. You will need your computer plugged in and connected to the Internet, preferably via an ethernet cable. You may also need access to another computer for downloading special packages, usually what is called “firmware” — special drivers not included by default for things like network hardware.

*If you are reading this sometime after I post it, the version numbers for the latest will be higher, obviously. Start here and navigate through the links on the page, selecting CD, i386 and something that looks similar to what I show above.

Once it boots, you’ll run through the normal settings that almost any OS will ask about: language, keyboard, etc. At some point you’ll be offered a menu. I recommend you choose the graphical install routine because these days it works on most systems and is easier for newbies. If it fails, you can start over and try the non-graphical install, which is almost the same routine but not such a pretty face. It’s still not that difficult in “text mode.” Most of it is self-explanatory to anyone who’s messed with computers at all. If you know you don’t have a clue, you really should read the installation guide in detail. While you’re at it, there are several YouTube videos that might help, but you have to be aware they usually default to the GNOME desktop, which is simply not good on newbies.

Note: Choose your “location” based on time zone; don’t try to find your exact geographical location.

At some point you’ll be presented with a list of “tasks” that will include desktop, base system, etc. Typically it will pre-select “printer server” — don’t be confused; this is necessary if you intend to connect any kind of printer to your system, either by cable or by wireless. I don’t use my laptop that way, so I de-selected that by clicking and removing the checkmark. I did make sure that the laptop item was chosen because Debian keeps that sort of stuff in a separate install and detection routing.

For the rest of the options, I offer some general advice. If you see an option to update packages from the Net as you go, select that. You’ll be asked to select a “mirror” as your primary source of packages and updates. Normally the list will start with something close to your geographical location, something pretty fast and reliable. There’s seldom anything wrong with taking the first one on the list, unless you already know the right answer. We can adjust this later using a special tool Debian provides, but right now we just need to let Debian have a chance to add packages not already on the CD, extra packages that will make your life easier.

You’ll need two good passwords, one for the administrator account (root) and one for the user account from which you’ll routinely operate in Linux (keep it simple when choosing a user name; mine is simply “ed”). I recommend a minimum of 9 characters, and you should combine the advice found here and here. These ideas still work as well as anything will. Don’t get lost on the partition business. I’m going to assume a computer devoted to Debian alone as the only OS, so choose to replace whatever else is on there, and accept the default partition scheme of putting everything in all one partition. You can decide whether you want to participate in the popularity contest for package selection, but I recommend you select to let GRUB install as your boot manager.

During installation you may be advised to get hold of some special firmware (drivers). The installer will pause while you decide and select to proceed or skip it. For example, my laptop required something for RealTek networking, and I did a quick search for “Debian realtek firmware”. I was led to a page where I could download the package individually, making sure I was on the page for the version of Debian I was installing (Wheezy; look in the upper right hand corner of the page below the banner and make sure you are in the right version). Scroll down to the bottom of the page for a list of architectures you can download; we are using “i386”. Click on that and pick a mirror in your geographical vicinity. Once you have the package, copy it to the top directory of any USB memory stick. Insert, then select to proceed with loading the firmware. The installer should have no trouble finding the package if it’s not hidden in any folders on the memory stick. It will load and proceed with the installation.

At some point the installer will tell you it’s all done and ask you to be ready for the reboot. It should kick out the CD and wait for you to select going farther. The system will reboot and should do some finish-up work, then drop you onto the login screen. Make sure you select your user account name, then type in the password you chose for that account.

Before the desktop fully displays, you will probably be asked to select whether you want the default toolbar, or an empty one that you configure from scratch. We assume here that you need the first option because you don’t have any idea what to do with the second. Once you choose, you’ll be presented with a default desktop that shows a toolbar across the top and maybe one at the bottom that tends to hide until you point your mouse at it. Explore; the main menu button is upper left with the XFCE mouse logo. There are other icons along the same toolbar indicating different system functions. Take a look around and change some of the settings to your taste. Most of it will make sense if you take time to think it over.

That’s all for this time.

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