Re: Failure to install xombrero on Wheezy due to unmet dependencies.

On 11/24/2014 10:27 PM, Jim Murphy wrote:

Thanks for the responses. I apologize for the delay getting back to you, busy with other things. Hopefully this email will not create a new thread, as I hadn't yet subscribed to the list at the time I sent the original email or by the time it was responded to.

As an FYI, my normal package manager is synaptic, and /etc/apt/sources.list does have an entry for backports. Using synaptic is where I initially encountered this issue. I had also tried apt-get via the command line with the same results. After reading both replies(Andrei and Salman) to my original email, I'm surprised I hadn't run into this issue before. I believe I may have once before with a small package, but at the time I didn't really need it and was distracted by something else so I moved on and never investigated at that time. I'm more surprised that with all the web searches I did about this, I didn't find a reference to the links supplied in the answers I received here. Andrei and Salman again thanks.

Using the -t option with the aptitude command, xombrero installed first try. So far I like the changes I see with xombrero, except one(can not scroll through the tabs with the mouse scroll wheel as I did with xxxterm) -- not your problem! Re-reading about apt, aptitude and synaptic, so hopefully I won't be bothering you again with stuff I should have already been aware of. I believe I got way to complacent using synaptic most of the time. I'll be fixing that.

Best to all,

Jim

Not at all, Jim.

The reason that you hadn't run into this problem may be that the programs you wanted to install had no dependency in Backports repo. By default, you may not upgrade a package from main/contrib/non-free to Backports, but you explicitly tell Debian to do it for you [1]. Synaptic also follow the same discipline, but you can change it via, Settings > Preferences > Distribution > Prefer Versions from > wheezy-backports. It is *not* recommended to change that setting in Synaptic because if you do so, *all* your packages will be upgraded to the Backports versions and it my endanger the stability of your distro. [2]

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/Backports
[2] http://backports.debian.org/Instructions/

Best,
Salman

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