The installation ran without issues and the OS GUI loaded at an the inappropriate resolution, on only one of my two wide screen monitors, exactly as I expected. I wasn't expecting any mechanism for easily installing nvidia proprietary drivers either, as I would in Ubuntu, so I was expecting these problems. It was like this in Ubuntu a couple of years back, so I was simply dusting off old skills. All that was required was enabling the non-free repos in the the Software Sources GUI and then issuing the odd sudo apt-get which I have to admit I found myself using more than the Software Centre in latterly in Ubuntu. After a reboot I was able to use the nVidia GUI to enable the second monitor and set my screen resolution. Good start.
I've talked about Rhythmbox,Banshee et al before and while I'm sure they are great applications for some I have no use for all that functionality. I don't need applications to manage my media, I manage all my data files myself with Nautilus, having a media app organize all of my media files would simply be redundant.
sudo apt-get purge rhythmbox
sudo apt-get install audacious
Excellent. I can play my collection of mp3s and oggs, Audacious is tiny and does what it says on the tin. It includes all the functionality to: play music; create and edit playlists; without dazzling you with album covers and lyrics and links to similar media you don't want. Perfect. Having to resort to the command line to install my essential graphics drivers was a blast from the past that I didn't mind, the process like so much else: painless. On the other hand, I was dreading the Alsa troubleshooting process still waking in cold sweat some nights dreaming of the horror of trying to get it working properly in Ubuntu pre 6.04. Imagine my joy on finding sound was working out of the box.
sudo mount -t cifs //server.ip/share /mnt/share -o username=themainliner,password=password
You can have that one. Somehow I always remember to create the mount point after issuing this command.
sudo mkdir /mnt/share
should really be first. Testing my new fstab with sudo mount -a was returning familiar errors and troubleshooting it was becoming irritating before remembering that if you're going to mount samba shares you might want to install samba.
sudo apt-get smbfs
fixed all errors. What a dumbass.
Ripping out OpenOffice and deploying LibreOffice 3.3 was disaqpointing given how new Debian 6.0 is, but I guess the Project erred on the side of caution, LibreOffice is still a very green offshoot fork. I shouldn't complain Fedora 15 features Gnome3. If Debian 7 goes down that route I will jump off the Debian-based/Gnome ship entirely. I'm soon trialling Pardus and giving openSUSE another go. I miss Amarok and Kopete.
Now down to serious business and the point where the Debian journey might derail: Wine and World of Warcraft. Having update my sources appropriate I go to the command line to issue: sudo apt-get install wine. Well, everything seem to complete correctly. I create a new custom panel launcher and enter the command line wine '/media/Games/World of Warcraft/WoW.exe' -opengl. The moment of truth...and it works. I'm a little numbed by this, this is not what I expected. I copy the basic USB Ergodex drivers to my home folder and knock up another custom application launcher. I click it out of curiosity and the DX1's green light comes on...yeah the USB development packages the drivers depend on are part of a default Debian install as they are not in Ubuntu. Gaming is sorted.
So,I've rebuilt the main box and there is no place for Ubuntu, I just don't need it, either 11.04 with Ubuntu Classic or 10.10. Debian Squeeze has everything I need. All the apps I know and love from Ubuntu, Gnome 2 panels, Apt, Synaptic all that Ubuntu experience making using it a breeze. I have found my new main OS. Debian 6 Squeeze is very, very good.