Hello, I have been GNU/Linux user for over 10 years now. I have been using several distros, as you might imagine, and in the last year or so I've been using libre distros only.
I have been tinkering with rolling release distros, which is fun, but as I become older I now want for my main machine a distro that "just works". I have never been using Ubuntu-based distros intensely, because there are out-of-the-box too many GUI-based Wizards and configuration tools for my taste. They are fine for new GNU/Linux users, but for a console and text file configuration guy like me this makes the system very complex. In the moment I use Debian, which I consider "almost libre" since 6.0, but the software in it is quite outdated. I switched to unstable/sid which works in general, but sid is de facto a rolling release distro with which I had to tinker again, (e. g. because the last dist-upgrade broke something) So I want to give Trisquel a try. The 6-month-release cycle seems ideal to me, the software is stable but not too old. The only thing is the mentioned "bells and whistles". Currently I am running Trisquel in a virtual machine to test it. My question is: Is there a method to install a simplified version of Trisquel, which is more "Debian-like"? E. g. I don't want a network manager, I want to edit /etc/network/interfaces for network configuration - but when I tried to remove NetworkManager with synaptic it installed wicd instead, another network managing software. It drives me crazy when the package management software thinks that it's smarter than me :-) While we are at it: is it possible to revert to Sysvinit again? Took me years to understand /etc/inittab, and now it is gone :-) Or maybe there is a list of non-essential packages which I can use to remove unnecessary packages after installation. Regards, Henry
