The other thing is that you can in packages to particular sources, eg kde to unstable and ssh to stable. I am not sure how you actually do this but it is a separate file somewhere under /etc/apt I think.
so although there may seem to be an excessive number of sources, some of them may be there for particular reasons. take a poke around under /etc/apt and see what you can find. One of the reasons mepis/knoppix et al seem different to straight debian is that they successfully mix up their sources to acheive, for example, a very recent desktop (kde3.1.5 in mepis's case) with a stable base install. On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 11:04:38 +1300 Jim Cheetham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 10:56, Dave wrote: > > I am curently having a play arount with apt-get on Mepis and the default > > sources list seems to be huge 50+ sources currently listed - stable/unstable/ > > testing > > is it normal/desirable to have such large souge group? > > Debian is mirrored in a lot of places - I guess Mepis just provides as > many alternatives as possible. > > >From the man page for sources.list :- > > It is important to list sources in order of preference, with the most > preferred source listed first. Typically this will result in sorting by > speed from fastest to slowest (CD-ROM followed by hosts on a local > net-work, followed by distant Internet hosts, for example). > > You should put the NZ ones first, and after that you can choose whether > to have entries or not - I would say not, because you have to retrieve > the package list from each one of them whether you're going to download > packages from them or not. However, having them means that if citylink > dies temporarily, you can still get stuff. On the other hand, they don't > die for long, and you only get new installs and ordinary updates from > them - security updates come only from security.debian.org - I don't > believe that they let the security updates be mirrored. > > -jim -- Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
