In which I am reminded why Ubuntu exists.

[reddragdiva]

Ubuntu 11.04 presents to the world an interface of ridiculous fuckery, even if you go to "classic." So, I'm a geek, let's see how the mothership is doing!

How to get the wifi working in Debian on a Mini 9:

wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o
wget http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
wget http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/contrib/b/b43-fwcutter/b43-fwcutter_013-2_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i b43-fwcutter*
tar xfvj broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o
sudo b43-fwcutter --unsupported -w /lib/firmware
broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver/wl_apsta_mimo.o
sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb
sudo modprobe b43

This is starting from the 1.1 GB live-USB version, of course. Add several more installation steps if you're starting from the 140MB netinst ISO.

For evil, tainted, ugly, non-free formats — like all your mp3s — it appears Debian non-free is faintly less faff than the various Ubuntu plausible deniability shields for Canonical. Flash still looks like, ah, trouble.

I haven't actually wiped Ubuntu and installed Debian yet. The appreciation gained for the paper-cut annoyances Ubuntu fixes is valuable, however. (And I bet the non-free world is still way easier on Debian than Fedora.)

Comments

[greylock]

I have to say the only things I have had not work are CD Burning and a program from the Synaptic Library called Transcript. It was a pile of crap, and simply would not work at all.

[reddragdiva]

CD burning I'm surprised didn't work - CD/DVD burners are really generic and standard these days.

If you've added "universe" and "multiverse" to Ubuntu, Synaptic will show you basically everything in Debian. And almost everything that compiles in Linux will be in Debian. Whatever the quality is. Some is, as you have discovered, terrifyingly awful.