One of Debian’s greatest strengths is the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). Among other things, it says that software must be free to redistribute in both binary and source code forms, and that people can freely make and distribute derivative programs from it. While this is one of the principal ideas of both Debian and the open source community, it does not help you if you want to watch a DVD on you computer. This is why Christian Marillat created the unofficial Debian Multimedia repository.
Monthly Archive for September, 2006
I have always had problems installing sound cards in Linux, whether it was on-board or a Sound Blaster. I have tried several SimplyMepis LiveCDs and they always seem to get some sort of sound out of my cards so I figured it was something in my configuration. I recently installed Debian on my main computer, and this time was typical with my Sound Blaster only halfway working.
My hard drive crashed and I was again left with the proposition of re-installing Windows. I have used Linux in the past and have dabbled with Debian in virtual machines. I read a great book about Debian called The Debian System written by Martin Krafft which convinced me that Debian was the right Linux distribution for me (where is Ubuntu’s Social Contract?). I highly recommend this book for anyone who is even slightly interested in Debian. After looking at what software I had that was Windows only, I finally decided that I don’t play Half-Life 2 that much and I could live without Dreamweaver. I made the switch.
Here are the directions for how to shutdown or restart in Xfce4 without a password. It will also enable the shutdown and restart buttons.
Open a terminal use visudo and add the following:
username ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/xfsm-shutdown-helper
This could need to be /usr/libexec/xfsm-shutdown-helper on non-Debian based systems.
