New Installation

I have finally installed my new hard drive and put an operating
system on it. I decided to take the plunge and completely do away
with Windows. So there is nothing but Debian testing (soon to be
stable) installed. I have decided to go through the assorted
problems and issues that I am dealing with as I get the new system up
and running.

Selecting the correct hard drive setting: cable select didn't work.
I got to the partitioning stage of the installation procedure and it
tells me there are no partionable devices. Grr.

X: I decided not to use the Debian desktop system task, but to do it
bit by bit. I also managed to incorrectly set up my mouse port
during the X server configuration. Lessons learned: dpkg-reconfigure
is very useful, but you need to know which packages you are
configuring (I systmatically went through the X packages that I had
installed to find the correct on). It is easier to use Debian tasks
(which I had to resort to in the end), although they take a long time
to download and use a lot of space.

Restarting: whatever is claimed, lots of things only work in Linux
after a system reboot.