In case you should try out the BIOS settings I recommended above I would appreciate some feedback whether it helped or not. Good luck!

I was totally unaware of Java-package. I hadn’t turned “contrib” on at first and I think I searched for such a thing before those packages had been added to my list.

Thanks again.

As I said I don’t have a logical explanation for my filesystem corruption. I don’t think it has anything to do with the upgrade procedure as such.

I agree that a “clean” Debian setup differs substantially from an upgrade, but to the best of the knowledge you should be able to perform the same configuration settings both ways. Remember that you can always reconfigure a package using dpkg-reconfigure pkg-name.

Here’s a hint for you re. your USB keyboard: In most BIOS’s you have a setting like Enable DOS compatibility or Enable legacy support or something like that. This actually enable a BIOS extension that provides USB keyboard and mouse support to 16-bit programs like DOS applications. It may very well be the case that the Debian setup uses this to detect whether it needs to support USB keyboards. If I were you I would at least try that option.

And another hint re. installing Java: I always install Java using java-package. This converts a Java package you downloaded from Sun to an installable Debian archive that properly registers within the package manager. Very nifty!

* I say “upgrade” because I actually did a fresh install. Fortunately I had the OS on a separate partition from /home, so while I did a back-up, it was just precautionary. I didn’t need to do a restore and I avoided overwriting /home during the installation process by choosing manual partitioning (during which I simply set the correct partitions for swap and boot).

My theory is that some decisions get made during a fresh install that can’t be easily accomplished during an “apt-get dist-upgrade”. I could be wrong about this, but that has been my observation.

The only glitch in my install was that my USB keyboard doesn’t seem to be recognized during the initial boot into the installation program. I had an old style keyboard that saved the day, but there was probably another workaround I could have used.

Other than that, I had absolutely NO configuration issues to resolve. Everything was detected. I should add that my USB keyboard isn’t even detected by the BIOS configuration utility, so I’m not even sure this is a Linux problem.

But I was actually surprised that plug-in cameras and other USB devices seem to work fine. I needed a Samsung driver for my printer which was a snap to install. I had to install Java by hand of course. I’ll still have to get Realplayer, Acrobat and a few other non-free things as I run into the need for them, but this has been by far the easiest Linux install I’ve ever done. Part of that may be that I’ve done quite a few of them by now too.