As mia_mcdavid commented, I did a lot of work on one of my Linux systems last night. As I wrote last week, I had rebuilt one of my Linux systems with Ubuntu, a derivative of the Debian distribution.

mdlbear at the time suggested that I try native Debian rather than Ubuntu. After a couple frustrating evenings trying to get Ubuntu system exactly the way I wanted I decided to take his advice. It worked out just fine. The installer was much more geek-friendly, giving an actual play-by-play of what it was doing done, instead of a static screen where the only suggestion that something was happening was the flashing of the hard disk light.

Configuring the system afterwards went just fine. If anything, it was easier than Ubuntu–what I wanted was different from the default in both cases, but it was easier to get there from Debian.

I still want to install Firefox. It apparently does not meet Debian’s strict free software rules, and so is not included in the distribution. I can appreciate this strict religious asceticism :-)> but do not feel called to follow it.

Thanks, mdlbear!