My post-installation of Debian Lenny 64-bit

Applied To : Debian Lenny 5.0 linux 64-bit

There are many useful & popular packages are not included as default in Debian installation. Thus, many additional post-installation steps are needed to enable the system to perform as desktop with full multimedia support. I have dropped down the notes here because these steps are easily forgotten and not straight forward.

Define the repositories
** Open Terminal console and logon as root.
** Edit /etc/apt/sources.list file (debian.nctu.edu.tw is a faster link for users in Malaysia)

deb http://debian.nctu.edu.tw/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free

### Security Updates Stable ###
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free

deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main contrib non-free
# deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main contrib non-free

# Never use it if your goal is to install on stable server
deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org lenny main


** Install keyring for backports repo
aptitude install debian-backports-keyring

** Download keyring for debian-multimedia repo
from http://www.debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/d/debian-multimedia-keyring/
and install it with the below command:
dpkg -i debian-multimedia-keyring_xxxx.xx.xx_all.deb

** To refresh the package list, you must run command "aptitude update"

To keep system up-to-date -- Update(Upgrade)
You can do it either GUI way or CLI way:
GUI : Under Gnome, run "Update Manager" > Click "Check" > "Install Updates"
CLI : In Console Terminal, run:
aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade


NTFS support
By default the very popular package ntfs-3g is not installed in Debian Lenny, so I include it in my post-installation steps. To install just run "aptitude install ntfs-3g". To enable auto-mount when system start-up for the newly added NTFS harddisk, just add new line in /etc/fstab file.
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/foldername ntfs-3g defaults,noatime 0 0
-- or --
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/foldername ntfs-3g quiet,defaults,noatime,locale=en_US.utf8,umask=0 0 0
where the anyname is pre-created folder name, and /dev/sdb1 is referring to my second harddisk name which can be found from /var/log/dmesg or using EITHER one of the below commands
ls /dev | grep sd
fdisk -l
dmesg | grep "sd[a-z]:"


Sun Java
You need to install both packages which are non-free. Then to verify installed successfully, can goto http://www.java.com/ if your system has openjdk-6 installed, then this may have conflict with sun-java and this resulting the java.com website cannot show sun java is installed and detected.
aptitude install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts

update-alternatives --config java

There are 3 alternatives which provide `java'.
Selection Alternative
-----------------------------------------------
1 /usr/bin/gij-4.3
*+ 2 /usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj/jre/bin/java
3 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java

Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number: 3

cd /usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins

ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so

To check iceweasel/firefox has the sun-java plugin, at the URL address bar key-in
about:plugins

To check java version : java -version


Flash Player

To install flash player:
aptitude install flashplayer-mozilla

If you prefer Adobe Flash Player, run below:
aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree

Chinese language Support
Using the below command to add more the locales.
dpkg-reconfigure locales

We need the below locales and the default remain as en_US.utf8

en_US ISO-8859-1
zh_CN GB2312
zh_CN.GBK GBK
zh_CN.UTF-8 UTF-8
zh_TW BIG5
zh_TW.UTF-8 UTF-8

To check if those locales are installed, run: # locale -a
Then install the following chinese fonts also.

aptitude install ttf-arphic-ukai ttf-arphic-uming ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp ttf-arphic-bkai00mp ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp

For more info, see http://wiki.debian.org.hk/w/Make_Debian_support_Chinese_(eng)
-->> And you may want to find the instruction on how to install "Input Method Engine"


Microsoft Fonts
There are a few my favourite fonts which are not available as default debian installation, such as Arial, Courier New, Times New Roman and Verdana. To install those, just run the below command:
aptitude install msttcorefonts


RAR compressed files
aptitude install unrar


Chat & Messenger

aptitude -t lenny-backports install pidgin pidgin-plugin-pack
aptitude install xchat


Popular packages for sound and video:

aptitude install w64codecs libdvdcss2
( replace with w32codecs, if you running 32-bit debian )

Others like :
brasero (burner), audacity, mplayer, xmms, vlc, amarok (for KDE), rhythmbox (for Gnome), Banshee, gtkPod, dvd::rip, Kino, Sound Juicer CD Extractor, RealPlayer, smplayer


Adobe Reader
The adobe.com website download is available for Linux x86 (32-bit) edition only. Since we have added a repository from the debian-multimedia.org, we can just run the below command.
aptitude install acroread


Opera web browser
Opera is not GNU browser, but you can download the .deb file from http://www.opera.com/download/
dpkg -i opera_9.64.2480.gcc4.qt3_amd64.deb
(change the .deb filename to be the same as your downloaded file)