Tag Archives: Debian

Improving Debian 6 (Squeeze) fonts rendering

The default Terminal and desktop fonts rendering of Debian Squeeze are nice but when it comes to intensive web browsing, particularly in high resolution, Debian is not as much comfortable as other operating systems such as Mac OS, Ubuntu and Windows.

The following instructions and commands provide an easy way to improve the overall display rendering with minimal changes to enable bold effects in GNOME sessions for a pleasant Web browsing experience with Google Chrome.

1. Update fonts configuration files.

Switch to root user.

$ su -
Password:

Download the new fontconfig XML files.

# wget http://www.osresources.com/files/centos-windows-fonts/fontconfig.tbz

Backup old configuration files then extract new ones into /etc/fonts.

# for i in `ls /etc/fonts/*.conf`; do cp $i $i.bak; done
# tar xvjpf fontconfig.tbz -C /etc/fonts/

Clean up.

# rm fontconfig.tbz

Exit root session.

# exit

Restart your GNOME session.

$ gnome-session-save --logout

2. Download, install and configure Google Chrome.

Switch to root user.

$ su -
Password:

Debian Squeeze comes with Chromium Web Browser version 6.x. Download and install the latest version of Google Chrome. Replace i386 by amd64 if your operation system is 64 bits.

# wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb
# dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb

If you get the following message:

Errors were encountered while processing:
  google-chrome-stable

Then install missing dependencies as follows:

# apt-get -f install

Clean up and exit root session.

# rm google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb
# exit

Run Google Chrome by opening Applications > Internet > Google Chrome or by issuing the following command:

$ google-chrome &

Click on the wrench icon in top right corner and select Preferences. In the Under the Hood tab, set Page zoom to 125%.

Installing VMware Tools on Debian 6 (Squeeze)

VMware Tools are an optional set of drivers and utilities that can greatly improve the speed, efficiency and manageability of the virtual machine’s guest operating system. These tools allow cut and paste, mouse and clock synchronization, folder sharing across environments and several other key benefits.

This tutorial has been tested on Debian Squeeze running on VMware Workstation 8. The following steps should work on all the latest versions of Debian and VMware Workstation/Player.

1. In an X session, launch a Terminal and switch to root user.

$ su -
Password:

2. Update your system.

# apt-get update

3. Install kernel headers and tools required to compile and install VMware Tools.

# apt-get install make gcc linux-headers-$(uname -r)

4. Mount the VMware Tools virtual CD.

In VMware Workstation menu, click VM then select Install VMware Tools… menu item. This will put a VMware Tools CD icon on the desktop and a File Browser window should be opened immediately.

If the file browser doesn’t open or it is empty, then in the VMware Workstation menu, click VM, choose Cancel VMware Tools Installation, accept if asked to disconnect the CD-ROM and try again this step.

5. Extract VMware Tools to the tmp directory.

# cd /media/cdrom
# tar -C /tmp -zxvf VMwareTools-*.tar.gz

6. Start the installation.

# cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib
# ./vmware-install.pl

Accept the defaults for every question.

7. Clean up.

# cd /tmp
# rm -rf vmware-tools.distrib

8. VMware Tools is now installed and configured. Restart the machine to get all features working.

# reboot