Collins wrote:
Here's an invitation for you debian types in the group. How's about an
SxS HowTo (or multiples) on working with debian and updates (the
complete idiot's guide to debian).
sites and sources for upgrades
http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages
debian packages fall into 3 groups; stable, testing and unstable. It's up to the user to choose how confident he is in the levels, but most agree that testing is very safe. The level of your machine is determined by /etc/apt/sources.list, obviously a list of packages sources that you have chosen. a line fro this file might look like:a really simple primer on debian packages
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free
and would point to debian.org ftp site in the stable branch. Changing stable to testing would be a step toward the more recent additions. Most new installs point to stable, so all you would need to do to update or install a package is, as root in a terminal, type
apt-get install foo
where foo is your desired package. This assumes a connection, preferably high bandwidth, but modem will do, to the internet. (you can also use a cd) Apt will go out to your sources, look at the packages and dependencies, determine what is needed, download all needed packages and install them. If there is a problem, such as an unreconcilable dependency or conflict, it will tell you as much. IMHO It's really the most simple and elegant system when it works. And in libranet/debian it nearly always works when using stable or testing. When trouble can start is in using unstable or outside sources. Or mixing types. But usually it just works. I"ve been running libranet for a while with very few problems. Redently I tried to use an unstable package for Mozilla, and it whiped out galeon. There were a lot of unsatisfiable dependencies, so I gave up and went with the Mozilla-installer. This worked, but now I've forfeited the ability to uninstall Mozilla using "apt-get remove mozilla".
There is an excellent gui package manager front end called Synaptic that lists available, installed and upgradable packages, and simplifies the process. And dselect, an ncurses front end, will allow upgrades over a network connection. (as will apt-get, of course)
I used Caldera 2.4 and 3.1 but started searching for an alternative, and settled on libranet for most things. Although I still, on occassion, use redhat, slackware, debian3.0 and mandrake, all of which are installed on this box, when the mood strikes, I always come back to libranet. My beef is the cost of the current version, but you get what you pay for. (sometimes) (although I'm using a beta 2.7 version)
Someone feel free to elaborate and correct. I'm no expert.
--
Ken Moffat
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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