Re: Question on installing packages and upgrading
Le 2000-02-19 19:30:00 +0100, Alex Schuster écrivait :
> I am using Debian stable for some weeks now, but there still are so
> many things I don't really understand, for example the installation of
> debian packages. I know how to use dselect, and I can also use dpkg.
> But how do I, for example, install a newer version of windowmaker or
> netscape? There are several .deb packages, and I don't know which of
> them to use. Sometimes a packages.gz is also there. Can I do something
> with it, like showing it to dselect, so I can use this tool for
> installing?
> But it wants a whole debian tree, not just some additional packages. I
> can install the packages manually, but this involves a lot of dpkg -I
> or checking the dependencies first.
You should install apt, and set up dselect to use the apt method.
Apt is able to download just the packages that are necessary to install
the packages you want.
(And apt will tell you how much data you need to download).
> Another problem: my Debian stable is so outdated. New packages for
> wmaker etc. usually need newer versions of other packages. And these
> need other new stuff, and so on. For example, I wanted to install
> xmms, an mp3 player, and got it from the frozen packages. It needed
> some newer libraries, which I got after some downloading. Now, xmms is
> running, but much some software (e.g. xaos) doesn't run any more.
XMMS, as most of the Potato, depends on libc6 2.1. Slink packages
depends on libc6 2.0. Installing the XMMS from Potato requires
upgrading libc6 to 2.1. Which will require you to upgrade most
of your packages to Potato.
I believe you should either move back to Slink, or upgrade to
Potato (which I wouldn't advise you to do for the moment).
The intermediate position (Slink + libc6 2.1) really causes
too much problems (too many thinks will not work).
> Also, dselect complains about dependency problems, and I always have
> to override its suggestins by Shift-Q in order to complete selections.
> I know some of the missing libraries, but I don't dare to start
> downloading them, because who knows whcih other stuff they will need.
This is the dependency side of the libc6 problem. You will
end up downloading the entire Potato.
> I like the Debian philosophy, but I also see that soooo many things
> don't work well/correctly/at all. And I always always run into some
> problem when installing new stuff, like having to download many other
> stuff, or some other programs refuse to work after that. I need newer
> windowmanagers, newer CDburning software, MP3 encoding software, and
> much more. Lots of stuff to download, and probably that's not enough,
> because of my outdated libraries.
There are 2 sides to your question :
* Slink does not include the latest version of the various software
you may use. This is more or less due to the way Debian works.
Prior to being released, Debian take the time to fix most of
the bugs in the existing packages, and does not allow upgrades
to new version, except pure bug fixes. (The so-called freeze).
Once This is over, the new version of the distribution is released.
It is more reliable, but has less up-to-date. Also, for the moment,
the time between to release tend to be quite long (6 months+), which,
for some not yet mature software, is very long.
* Installing libc6 2.1 is likely to have broken a lot of things.
This probably explains the numbers of things that do not work.
> So, what would I need to do to get an up to date system? Without being
> online for days (which costs some money here). Or is potato finished
> very soon?
Potato should be finished soon enough. But I wouldn't hold my breath
waiting...
If you have access to a high speed internet connexion, you can try to
download Potato. It should be usable, but still, a lot of things need
to be fixed.
> Sorry for the bashing on Debian here. Of course it is not fair to
> compare a brand-new distribution like Mandrake to Debian stable which
> is quite old now. But I see that with Mandrake I could easily start
> doing all the stuff I want to do, while here in Debian I am still at
> the point of wondering how to install newer software.
The nice thing in Debian is the ease of upgrading between releases,
and the fact that it is a quite reliable, that it implements a
good infrastructure (menus, documentation, etc.).
Installing new softare from stable is easy (apt-get install
packagename).
But installing a new softare not in stable is more difficult.
Sometimes, someone will have package the latest software you
want outside the official stable distribution.
Sometimes, you can just download the package from unstable/frozen.
You can download and compile the source package
(apt-get -b source packagename). Or, for a package not in frozen,
you can "alien" an existing RPM package. Or download and install
the source of the package you're interested in.
Note that none of these option is totally failsafe.
You can also choose to live on the unstable distribution.
But this means a lot of download, and no warantee your
system will work or be reliable.
Hope it helps.
--
Jean-Philippe Guérard
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