Re: Newbie Aptitude Question about Security Updates

[Douglas Allan Tutty <dtutty@porchlight.ca>]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 02:23:01PM -0400, Jan Sneep wrote:
> "You are not going to learn Debian (or Linux) overnight...." ... Oh, I
> know that ... didn't expect to ... doesn't make it any less
> frustrating though ... as I said after three months of plugging away
> at this, when I have some time to work on it, and I'm still not even
> at the point where I can download and install the software that got me
> started on this adventure .. signed up on the Ogo-users list and have
> beed faithfully reading the postings figuring that at some point the
> tid bits I've been picking up will help ... thnakfully it is a slow
> list  ... compared to this one. :O)
> 

Part of the problem is that to have a graphical system installed means
you have a whole lot of things installed.  The more things installed,
the more likely that something somewhere can go wrong.  The most recent
case was going wrong while checking for security updates.

Try this:

	Install but don't select _any_ tasks, not even standard.
	If that doesn't give you aptitude then do apt-get install
	aptitude aptitude-doc.

Read the aptitude manual and learn aptitude.  Get aptitude set up to do
what you want/need and to know what packages _you_ want and what are
just automatic.

Then take one thing at a time and use aptitude to install it.  Start
with all the important things like man pages, an editor (nano and
vim-tiny), lynx, and probably mc since its so handy.  

Then get more documentation: debian-reference, HOWTOs.

Then get networking (e.g. pppconfig or whatever you need) so you can
access the ineternet.  Then mail (mutt, exim4, mailx).

At this point you have a fairly complete system.  Understand this system
thoroughly.

Then look at gnome's dependancies and mark for manual install the main
Xorg on which gnome depends.  This will give you a basic X system (with
at least an xterm.  Finally, add gnome.

I wouldn't expect someone who's mathematical experience is balancing a
checkbook to understand a calculus text.  They could bang away on it
till they're blue in the fingers; its too big a gap.  Ditto any OS with
the difference between a user of a computer and an administrator.
Remember, as soon as you get root privileges (su, sudo, whatever) you
stop being a user and you become a sysadmin.

Good luck,

Doug.