On Tue 03 Sep 2002 20:41, Maartin wrote: > Hi Branden, > > New to the linux scene and even newer to the Debian scene. > After having spent some time trying to conf X ver 4.1.?-? that > comes with Woody, I came to the conlusion that for my hardware > to work I need X 4.2, and after reading your post on 4.2 not in woody. > Wellcome to Linux and Debian!
> I then did the google search for any debian packages > but no luck. > > Then somebody pointed my to http://people.debian.org/~branden/, > boy was I glad to see this. But now the reason for the e-mail. > Branden is the regular X maintainer for Debian, and he does quite a bit. > My server does not have access to internet so I download with Windoz @ work > and then cart home. But being very new to Debian 'How do I install ?' is > there a sort > of controller file that I need to 'run'. Like in a source compile with > ./configure and then makefile ? > I am guessing that you have the .deb files. These are Debian formatted. their are several tools within Debian for working with these, but a stack of floppies is difficult. Also, I'm no expert so this is just a simple breakdown. apt-get: Quite good for automatically fetching and upgrading from the 'net. Of course this requires Internet access, sorry. dselect: much more controlable for installing large groups like X, KDE, Gnome etc. I think it can work with floppies, but I'm not sure. dpkg: The work-horse behind the previous tools. dpkg can be used on it's own. Probably the easiest way to deal with a stack of floppies, though I'm sure someone can correct me. Here the problem is, dpkg will not install anything unless the dependancies are met. X is a large system and is split into several packages. This is where things will get difficult. You will need to install the minimum required packages at once to get dpkg to co-operate. I'm sure their are easier ways to deal with a stack of floppies, but even easier would be connect to the Internet and use dselect or apt to fetch the packages from Brandens site. Either of these methods takes care of dependancies automatically. > Or do I have to tar all the files one by one and copy the contents over ? > > I hope you can find the time to answer my e-mail, by the looks of the > posts u are a very > busy person. > There are many people here, but mostly they deal with tracking bugs in Branden's packages. The Debian-user list is a much better place to ask. > Thank You, > Maartin. I know this isn't much help for a newbie, but keep at it. Debian is certainly worth the effort to learn. Cheers, John Gay
