The base install of Debian comes with just about nothing.. pretty much lets you install whatever you want. Sure its great to do a lot of the configuratoin by command line and config files.. its great sometimes to have a GUI that helps you out. I wouldnt mind installing Gnome or some other minimal GUI so that I can vnc in and work with the interface. I installed X and vncserver and was able to access my server. The only problem I ran into was getting gnome to work. Any suggestions? All I had was the base interface that Debian comes with after you install X through tasksel.

Check out:

http://www.gnome.org/faqs/users-faq/installing.html

Here's a quote from it:

If you are a new GNOME user, run apt-get install task-helix-core to get the core parts of it, or apt-get install task-helix-gnome to get all the applications.

Does that help?

ok cool.. i'll give that a shot. a problem I am running into is when I install X through tasksel it takes me through a configuration with debconf and I'm not sure what to use for settings.

Ok, I gave it a shot. Ignore my previous instructions - they didn't work...

Here is what I did:

Make sure "hostname" is set to a FQDN that actually resolves to your IP (like li-20.members.linode.com).

As root:

apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade (just to be safe)

apt-get install vncserver
apt-get install xfonts-base (might not need this)
apt-get install gnome-core (this did a whole bunch of stuff)
apt-get install gnome-session

Then, create a file ~/.vnc/xstartup, put this into it:

#!/bin/sh
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
gnome-session &

Ok - save that file, and then

vncserver

It's aweful slow for me, for some reason - and a farily crippled install. But it gets it started...

-Chris

ok neat.. thanks a lot. i'll give it a shot just. did you have to install X at all or just went ahead and installed gnome? i tried out the full install of rh9 lastnight and it was slow but not terribly slow. i think if you enable xdmcp and access your computer through x-win there will be a noticible speed increase over vnc.

VNC has it's own X server (Xvnc).

My experience is VNC on the Red Hat installs was much faster - I should make "real" Debian images like the others.

I'm not much of a GUI guy, and I messed around with xdmcp for a while, but could never get it to work. We need tutorials

-Chris

hehe yes.. tutorials are the best.