Got Debian running, too
It's not surprising that I managed to get Debian Linux running on the orange iMac I blogged about the other day. Since *buntu is based on Debian, this would seem to be a no-brainer. However, what is of note is the easy text-based install (very similar to Ubuntu's alternate CD install, but with a much shorter download time and better support for installation of most features over the Internet (the normal CD is only about a quarter gig; everything else is downloaded using apt automatically during install).
All is not perfect in Debian-land; there are some errors that I haven't figured out how to fix yet (any suggestions from folks who have gotten this to work would be much appreciated). Nautilus is erroring out on startup due to an "unexpected error" ("Nautilus can't be used now, due to an unexpected error from Bonobo when attempting to register the file manager view server" - That's pretty clear, right?).
Apparently my Gnome Settings Daemon is also restarting too many times and can't launch as planned either.
However, the IceWeasel browser included with Debian was pretty quick, OpenOffice was a bit sluggish, but certainly performed as required, and the system only took about a minute to boot.
Not bad for a computer that just won't die and that I can't bear to send to the recycler just because it's old. It still works, after all.
Anyone else who has had good luck (or a bad experience) with Debian, talk back below and have a great weekend!