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.)