On Monday 23 June 2008 11:00:52 am Alan Mackenzie wrote: > Hi, Daniel! > > On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 08:54:55PM -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: > > [ .... ] > > > Just to be a little more clear, you can find out exactly what aptitude > > thinks by examining the status flags on the left-hand side of the > > package list. Normally packages have flags like this: > > > > pi package-name ... > > > > The two characters on the left say what the current (p) and planned (i) > > states of the package are. "p" here is for "purged" and "i" is for > > "installed". You can find a complete list in the online help; of > > particular interest for you is the "B" state, "broken". I bet that the > > flags on "vim" were something like: > > > > iB vim ... > > > > which means that vim is currently installed, and will be broken by the > > current set of planned actions. > > Cheers! That's appreciated, because I'm sure I'll remembert this through > the next time I'll be using aptitude, possibly in several months. > > > Now more information than you probably want. ;-) > > [ snipped, but read with thanks. ] > > > > > Is there a reason you're still using sarge? > > > > > > <rant mode> > > > Yes. Installing Debian is (was?) so painful that I really can't face > > > the drudgery again at the moment. I've only had about 2 years use out > > > of sarge so far. > > > > I'm sorry it was such a pain. (rest of rant snipped) > > > > > In the real world, nobody I know has got any sort of GNU/Linux > > > installed and working in a few days. Most have tried and given up > > > after a weekend or two, going back to a Microsoft system. Those few > > > who have managed have, like me, endured weeks of drudgery. Only on > > > internet blogs do I read "Wow!" reports about how it works perfectly > > > an hour and a half after inserting the installation DVD. > > > > Well, my first Debian installation was from a pile of floppies, so I'm > > not going to be able to comment intelligently on how hard or easy today's > > process is. > > > :-) That appears somewhat evasive. Installing the bootstrap from DVD, > > and "installing" the desired set of packages, whether from DVD or over > the internet takes a trivial amount of time - at most an evening. It's > the "little" adjustments which then take weeks - like getting debian to > access USB sticks (though that's probably painless now), or a laser > printer on the parallel port (took me a whole day, including getting an > output filter going). > > I suspect there's an Emperor's New Clothes effect here - it takes > _everybody_ weeks to get a GNU/Linux system properly set up, but nobody > (apart from me ;-) has the courage to be the first to admit it. So, how > long did it take you from making that pile of floppies to having a > satisfactory Debian? What units of time would the answer be in, even? > > ######################################################################### > > Anyhow, I've got my aptitude working again, and I'm profoundly grateful > for the help you and others gave me. The essential problem was having > "stable" instead of "sarge" in my sources.list. Sometime or other, I > will be upgrading - maybe to lenny when it comes out rather than etch. > I've tried out a few other distributions (including ubuntu), but didn't > like them much. I even tried out FreeBSD, but it became obvious I'd have > a lot to unlearn and relearn there. So, I'll probably be sticking with > Debian, at least for some while. > > There didn't seem to be a python >=2.4 in the sarge repository, so in the > end I downloaded the source code tarball from the python site and built > it myself. (Then I downloaded and built the application I really wanted > which needed this python.) > > Again, thanks! > > > Daniel > > -- > Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany). FWIW, in 2001 it took me 30 days to get X working from a potato (IIRC) system. In those days, you had to use the terminal naked, in the snow, with out shoes on. Today, it would take me 30 min to install Debian stable, another one two two hours to download all the software I like (complete with two dist-upgrades to testing, then to Sid). X, so far, just works from the install system, selecting the "Desktop" from the ncurses package load out (or maybe it is X-system, I forget, with Debian, how often do you re-install?) Prior to that, I installed RH and Mandrake, both of which I would badly break with in a week, resulting in a re-load. I learned nothing from it, other then how to break it and how to hate the RPM system. After my first Debian install (and truly that was my first Linux system I used) I learned how Linux worked (or started to learn). As they say, the learning curve is steep IF it does not work as expected "out of the box". -- Damon L. Chesser damon@damtek.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser
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