gene heskett composed on 2022-12-06 21:03 (UTC-0500):
I'd love to be able to install TDE, which would give me back the best
email agent linux ever had, kmail-3.5 but with all its bugs fixed, but
the first TDE package I select, generates over 300 hits of dependency
hell from synaptic.
All my Debians, which I don't keep count of but surely must number in excess
of 50, are /originally/ installed NET, usually by loading the installation
kernel and initrd using Grub, and using a kernel cmdline that includes the
following options:
netcfg/confirm_static=true tasks=standard base-installer/install-recommends=false
IIRC this gives me a Debian with zero X installed, though I could be remembering
wrong and getting a minimal X lacking all the well known DEs and leaving me with
only IceWM and startx.
Next I don't remember whether /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00InstallRecommends has been
created as a consequence of those command line options, or I make it myself, as
it's been a while since I needed a fresh installation, but it contains:
APT::Install-Recommends "false";
Only after this is done, I follow the /optional/ instructions on:
<https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/Debian_Trinity_Repository_Installation_Instructions>
This means after sources & GPG configuration, I do:
apt install tdebase-trinity tdm-trinity konsole-trinity ksnapshot-trinity
Once this completes & I reboot to TDM, it's just a matter of logging in and checking
which extra packages I want that the base install didn't include, then adding them
with apt or aptitude. I have a working installation with no dependency shenanigans,
and no Gnome or other bloat that installing web browsers doesn't force.
I think I may have opened synaptic many many moons ago in *buntu before I ever
installed a Debian, but I doubt any of my Debians have synaptic installed. Only
apt/apt-get/aptitude are used for software installations here.
The currently booted state is:
# inxi -S
System:
Host: gb250 Kernel: 5.19.0-2-amd64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Trinity
v: R14.0.13 Distro: Debian GNU/Linux bookworm/sid
# df -h /
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p13 7.7G 4.3G 3.1G 59% /
# dpkg -l | grep trinity | wc -l
45
# dpkg -l | wc -l
883
Stats are similar with my Busters and Bullseyes, most of which are online
upgrades from Stretch or earlier releases. On this particular host, Buster
was the virgin on a then new Gigabyte Kaby Lake motherboard with NVME.