On Sat, 2003-03-08 at 11:49, Subba Rao wrote: > I am running Debian 3.0r (woody) and in many ways can be still considered a > Debian newbie, since I am moving from the Slackware camp. > > One thing I like about Debian is the "apt" package. I have installed several > packages via the net very conveniently. However I do not know if there are any > best practices in setting up "sources.list". When I wanted some package I > would add the source to the sources.list file and then update my system. Is > this a sound practice?
I dont think that adding "unofficial" sources would be considered a good practise unless you really wanted thoses packages, the version is unstable inappropriate *and* you know what you are doing. You are running the stable distribution which runs older packages to ensure reliability. If you want newer packages, why dont you just try the testing distribution. Just remove all the lines in sources.list and replace with (make sure you remove the line breaks that are put in by the mailer) deb ftp://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian/ testing main non-free contrib deb-src ftp://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian/ testing main non-free contrib #NON US packages deb ftp://ftp.fi.debian.org/non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free deb-src ftp://ftp.fi.debian.org/non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free If the packages there are still too old for you. Try the replacing the testing with unstable. Although, be warned, unstable is prone to breakages. You can also run a testing distro with some unstable packages which is what a *lot* of people do. For this, include the line APT::Default-Release "testing"; in your /etc/apt/apt.conf install a package from unstable using apt-get -t unstable install <package> You will have to have source lines in sources.list for the testing *and* unstable branch. > There are quite a few packages that I have downloaded such as Gnome 2.2 > XFree86 4.2.2 and several more. Debian freezes more frequently now i.e. each > time that the screensaver runs more than X hours. I simply have to reboot the > system. Without the forum taking offence I never experienced this kind of > system freezing on Slackware. gnome 2.2 is available in unstable and so is XFree 4.2.1. Also, A common mistake with debian newbies is to installed packages randomly just because you can. Try sticking with debian packages and you should find that these kind of problems happen *far* less often. Update your sources to point only to the debian packages, "upgrade" your system and see how that goes. You can also reinstall specific packages that are giving you problems using the command apt-get install --reinstall <package> HTH, Shri -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shri Shrikumar U R Byte Solutions I.T. Consultant Edinburgh, Scotland Tel: (0131) 558 9990 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: www.urbyte.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
