Re: Package management

[didier.gaumet@gmail.com]

Hello 

There are metapackages (groups of packages) in Debian.
I am not aware a a global multimedia Debian metapackage
There are some multimedia metapackages, though:

$ apt search multimedia-
[...]
multimedia-ambisonics/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for working with ambisonics (3D surround sound)

multimedia-animation/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for creating animations

multimedia-audio-plugins/stable 0.7 all
  Audio processing plugins, synths and virtual instruments

multimedia-audio-utilities/stable 0.7 all
  packages for manipulating & cataloging music and audio

multimedia-broadcasting/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for broadcasting media publicly or in the home

multimedia-csound/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for working with Csound

multimedia-devel/stable 0.7 all
  Extra packages for developers and package compiling

multimedia-djing/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for Disk Jockeys

multimedia-drums/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for drums & beats

multimedia-firewire/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for your firewire audiocard / interface

multimedia-graphics/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for making and editing artwork

multimedia-guitar/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for playing with your (virtual) guitar gear

multimedia-jack/stable 0.7 all
  JACK (Jack Audio Connection Kit) and ALSA related packages

multimedia-ladi/stable 0.7 all
  LADI, Linuxaudio session management, packages

multimedia-looping/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for looping music and audio

multimedia-midi/stable 0.7 all
  MIDI related packages

multimedia-mixing/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for mixing and mastering your music

multimedia-musiciantools/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for musicians

multimedia-photography/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for working with digital photography

multimedia-players/stable 0.7 all
  Packages which makes your multimedia tools complete

multimedia-puredata/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for working with Pure Data

multimedia-recording/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for audio recording

multimedia-samplers/stable 0.7 all
  Software samplers

multimedia-soundsynthesis/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for sound synthesis

multimedia-supercollider/stable 0.7 all
  Packages for working with SuperCollider

multimedia-tasks/stable 0.7 all
  Debian Multimedia tasks for tasksel
[...]

So if, for example, you want "multimedia" for playing multimedia (audio, video...), you could do:
$ sudo apt install multimedia-players

Chances are that you don't need an additional media-player (you have one if you have installed a Desktop Environment (Gnome by default)) but you need proprietary codecs for decoding certain media files.
You would probably read the Codecs article in the Debian Wiki:
 https://wiki.debian.org/MultimediaCodecs?action=show&redirect=DebianMultimedia%2FMultimediaCodecs

If you really want to install all related multimedia metapackages, I thinkk you could do:
$ sudo apt install multimedia-*
But it would install a huge number of packages.