DebianDesktopHowTo
This is starting as a draft...
Get yourself a sarge install CD and boot it and install and configure the base-system from it. (currently debian-installer beta3) Then choose "tasksel" and have following task meta-packages installed: desktop-environment, office and your localisation (country/language) package. At least german localisation is not set up correctly after the install so you need to:
* "dpkg-reconfigure console-data" and select you keyboard from the complete list (qwertz, standard pc 105 or 102 keys) * "dpkg-reconfigure locales" the installer generated right locales but missed to set them as system default.
Add additional user accounts if you wish (with "adduser <NAME>") but don't forget to put yourself and others in appropriate groups itterating: "adduser <NAME> <GROUP>". You probalby want to add users to the groups named: audio, floppy and maybe dip (connect to internet) or dialout (see /usr/share/doc/base-passwd/users-and-groups). To create a new group do "addgroup <GROUPNAME>". If it is your home PC maybe create a group "family", add the appropriate users to it and make a group directory for them say "mkdir /home/family" give it to them "chown :family /home/family" and change its mode "chmod 2774 /home/family" to make it a shared set-group-id directory so that groupmembers can work with each other's files in there. If the graphical login doesn't come up corrctly you'll probably need to "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" choose correct grafic card, or go with the VESA fallback driver. Install and configure the CUPS printing system packages as described on ["DebianCUPS"]. Start /usr/lib/openoffice/spadmin as root "add printer" and import your printers setup from /etc/foomatic/cups. "apt-get install libgnome2-perl" if you want the Gnome debconf frontend to actually work when you use synaptic to install further packages. Then start up synaptic and find, select and install the following packages: mc (midnight commander for terminal UI) gtk-led-askpass (have ssh use password prompt windows when run in scripts) usbutils (so hotplug does not complain not getting usb sync events) xfonts-*dpi-transcoded (to support localized fonts) zip unzip x-ttcidfont-conf (needed for the next) msttcorefonts (to display some webpages and documents correctly)
Now some configuring:
Add two lines to /etc/fstab to allow users to command ala "mount /cdrom": /dev/cdrom /cdrom auto ro,noauto,users 0 0 /dev/fd0 /floppy auto noauto,user,sync 0 0
Set the default to "umask 002" in /etc/profile AND /etc/login.defs to actually make use of the private user groups in debian. (what a mess) (KDE still is broken in this respect, check for "umask" in bugs.kde.org) The central settings for KDE in /etc/kde3 could also need some tweaking: -set CUPS as default printing system
...have fun! And if you encounter bugs search search the net if it is allready known, find the appropriate package and file a bug against it, if it concerns debian just use the "reportbug" utility for that.