Various (basic?) debian questions...
Hi all, thanks for all who have helped me out so far. Slowly, but steadily,
I'm getting to know how to do things in debian...
My new questions are : How do debian packages work? Everything that came on
the cd works nicely : if you keep it that way. My general question in
short, is, how to install new .deb packages from the net properly? How to
install E, licq, GQMpeg? How to convert rpm to deb properly? (seems most
people has rpm dists)
Is there somewhere with a debian-beginner-beginner kind of documentation? I
mean, I can't seem to find any docs for how someone is supposed to install
deb packages they got on their own, etc. etc.....I looked through support
and documentation pages on www.debian.org. Support? IRC (hard when you
don't have your computer working, or when you don't feel like wading
through lots of messages. And some people are just kind of rude)
Documentation pages talks mostly about how to get debian installed....
the following is some stuff I did, and screwed up, that led to these
questions so maybe you'll have an understanding of where I'm coming from..
--
I got all my hardware working, even the sound on my OPL-SA3 using the ALSA
driver... I started to set my sights on the software side of things: X and
windowmaker, and the software to go with it to make it nice and usable.
First off, I tried to get the GQMpeg frontend for mpg123 player. There was
no .deb package, and I couldn't figure out the dependencies (well, I gave
up.. it wasn't very important). Then, I tried to get Licq working, no .deb
package either. Couldn't work it out. Then, I tried to get Enlightenment
the window manager working. Couldn't get it working. I kept trying to get E
to work though...
Steps I took:
1. Went to www.enlightenment.org
2. Got the rpm dist
3. Used Alien on the rpm
4. did a dpkg -i on the produced deb
5. dselect, looked at it, and it said it didn't depend on anything and was
installed. E depended on a lot of things though... and when I looked at one
of the info sections, it showed all the deps, but dselect didn't check it.
6. Decided, fine. I'll try and find a real deb, or some faqs...
7. Looked on the E faq, told me to get the files needed for debian from a
"grab table", lots of deb packages were shown there, but they were all
broken links.
8. Found that most of the packages were linked to ftp.debian.org, so I
manually went there, and grabbed packages with the same name, but different
version number..
9. To make a long story short, I did dpkg -i on all the packages I got,
enlightenment was happy, but everything else was not. libc was now a 'u'
version, when it was a 't' version before. Everything was screwed up, so I
said, whooooooooo.. and deleted the linux partition.
10. Re-installed debian (10th time? 20th?) To save time, I didn't
re-install all the packages... just the stuff I seem to use so far. (all
the reqs, some of the standard stuff)
11. tried to get my sound working again, couldn't get alsa-driver to
compile.
12. dselect, selected 2.0.34 kernel source, installed it.
13. alsa-driver still won't compile.
14. configured the kernel, tried to compiled it, didn't work. missing
a86...
15. forgot that I needed bin86 package. Installed that.
16. kernel recompiled uneventfully. didn't do anything with it though
because I didn't need it (Had a previously compiled kernelI was using)
15. alsa-driver compiled.
16. alsa-libs compiled
17. alsa-utils failed to compile. Didn't know why.
18. Even though ./configure for alsa-utils didn't fail outright, it said
some things weren't found... byacc, bison, etc...
19. I installed those. Realized, most programs probably rely on standard
packages. So, I installed all the standard packages.
20. but for some reason, g++ caused a conflict with another standard
package.... g++libstd something or another.
21. chose g++ because I needed that.
22. got sound working again, got x working with windowmaker again.
23. tried to get enlightenment working again, used the "ftp access method"
in dselect to get new updated package listings. New package listings did
not show the deps that E needed. Did a dpkg -a on all the debs I kept from
previous installations. Went in, tried to get all the dependencies working
before installing the packages.
24. failed miserably. something wrong with libc6 'u' version and libc6 't'
version...
25. gave up. spent about 10 hours.
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