Malte Negendank wrote:
Hi all, I have, after unsuccessfully downgrading my system, just reinstalled my system, using apt-pinning. This, however, turned out to be less brilliant as it sounded at first, it just gave me loads of dependeny problems with some packages.
I tried it too once, with xserver-xfree86. The library dependancies un-installed all of my non-pinned development tools. :(
So I decided to move to stable, using backports (having found out that the things I needed testing and unstable for exists as backport - man am I a slow thinker!). Problem is, the non-stable packages are still there, andremoving them would uninstall most of my system.
Hopedfully someone else shares how to get rid of the testing/unstable packages.
Is there a safe way of removing these packages? Or - alternatively - is there a way to use apt-pinning without the dependency problems?
Sure, there's a way to use apt-pinning without dependancy problems; only pin small packages that dont depend on newer libraries. Unfortunatly with the version change in gcc between stable and testing/unstable the pickings are probably pretty slim. You could also pin more stuff, but then why not just dist-upgrade if you're going to be fine using the new package and all the new libraries.
The back-port route you've discovered is likely the safest way of getting newer software onto your older system. Search on "apt-get.org" is a very common answer on the list when people ask about getting newer packages for stable. You will then be waiting on the third-party packager for security updates instead of the Debian security team.
-- Jacob