Re: Installing new software

[Shyamal Prasad <shyamal.prasad@sbcglobal.net>]

    "David" == David Jones <jonesy@connectfree.co.uk> writes:

    David> Hi, I am running Debian Potato with XFree86 3. I have a
    David> full woody set of CD's but am unable to get XFree86 4 to
    David> work at all. Unfortunately, I can't use any of the other
    David> software on the woody cds because the system always wants
    David> to upgrade everything including X, which then won't work.
    David> How can I use the updated versions of say gimp, mozilla
    David> apache etc without the need to update X.  I will come back
    David> to the problem with X later but at the moment I would just
    David> like to use the other updated packages.  Is this possible
    David> and if so how?  Any help will be great.

Woody includes both XFree86 v3 and v4. You should be able to upgrade
to Woody and continue using your old v3 X server. I did this for a
while when Woody was still in testing, and I used to switch between
the two quite frequently until I got v4 working just right.

You do not have to worry about the X stuff getting upgraded, it is
only the server you need to worry about. Look at the package
xserver-common-v3. I would suggest you upgrade from Potato to Woody
all around, and use XFree86 v3 if you are certain your hardware is
unsupported by v4 (I believe there is some such hardware out there,
but I don't know about it myself).

Here, I even fired up the old laptop to make sure I'm not lying to
myself about this:

$dpkg -l 'xfree*common' 'xserver*common'
ii  xfree86-common 4.1.0-16       X Window System (XFree86) infrastructure
ii  xserver-common 4.1.0-16       files and utilities common to all X servers

Cheers!
Shyamal