Debian Jessie Release candidate 3 With Mate

Mike — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 00:51:43 GMT

In the last couple of days I have been trying out Release Candidate 3 of Debian Jessie.

I used the x86_64 net install CD image.

There are some minor differences from the Wheezy net install, most notable of which is the ability to choose between several different desktops:

Gnome
LXDE
XFCE
Mate
Cinnamon

There may be another one or two.

I chose Mate.

So far it's going OK. I have noticed a couple of things, one of which is annoying, the quiet volume of the installation voice, some of which are just observations.

These are:

The aforementioned very low volume of the SpeakUp speech during the install.
The mix of SysVInit and systemd.
The flakiness of the lightdm greeter in sometimes not speaking. Nothing new there.

On the Dell Latitude D630 I installed it on Mate feels nice and snappy, although the speech is a bit clipped.

There is some problem with the internal wifi which causes many messages to be spat out during boot, but the Latitude has a switch so I am able to switch off the wifi until I have logged into the desktop.

The specs of the Latitude are:

Intel Core 2 Duo.
2GHz Clock.
2GB RAM (with 2GB swap configured on Jessie).

Not exactly a screaming monster but nice and usable for programming and office stuff.

Orca has come a long way since Debian Wheezy, and I am looking forward to Jessie being released proper.

I'll totally document the accessible install process in a couple of days.

I have another Dell Latitude D630 with Trisquel Linux on it but I think this installation feels nicer.

Eyes-free Linux Ninja! (Debian Jessie)

Debian Jessie Release candidate 3 With Mate