Slashdot Mirror
Debian's Testing Branch Nears Completion
DeviceGuru writes "With Debian Lenny (aka 'testing') poised to displace Etch as the popular Linux distribution's 'stable' branch possibly as soon as next month, blogger Rick Lehrbaum loaded the latest preview (beta 2) of Lenny's KDE CD image onto an available Thinkpad, and took it for a spin. How's it coming along? After detailing a handful of issues — and offering solutions for each (except Bluetooth support) — he concludes: 'Other than the need for a few hacks and fixes, my main complaint with it is its inclusion of way too many of KDE's rich set of applications, such as games, tools, etc.' From the looks of it, looks like Lenny might be the new 'Debian stable' soon!"
'kde' is just a metapackage: it depends on the packages in that list (directly or indirectly). There's nothing wrong with leaving those other packages installed. The new apt/dpkg conventions try to help you remove cruft, so they let you remove those packages with `apt-get autoremove`. Instead of that, install a few that you need by hand to remove them from the list. When you don't see any in this list that you want, then run auto-remove.
But KDE is simply a metapackage much like ubuntu-desktop, for example, if you want to install KDE you simply do sudo apt-get install kde, removing the package KDE only removes the KDE metapackage.
The only point of the KDE metapackage is to provide a 1-click install for KDE.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
No, they are not annoying. This is a very useful new concept in Debian, I believe that once you understand it, you can see how nice it is.
Explaining better:
All those packages are installed as dependencies of the metapackage 'kde'.
You are trying to remove one of it's dependencies (kdegames) and that's why apt-get want to uninstall all other dependencies and the 'kde' itself.
If you want those packages, but not the kdegames, you should install those packages by hand (or at least those starting with kde, that I think most of them are metapackages also).
It can be new in Debian, but only relatively new in Ubuntu (I believe is in some new version of the apt system), but quite old in Gentoo. And it was one of the things that I missed most in Debian.
It's the current testing branch, installed using the second beta of the Debian-Installer version to be included in Lenny. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
Some of us already live in the future and use SSD on our laptops. Every gigabyte here is precious, since there's often not dozens, hardly even one dozen. Those 50MB are easily much more, sometimes up to gigs of useless crap. All applications also take up space in the menus, which might be annoying on a portable device with a smallish screen.
c++;
# apt-get remove kde
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
knetwalk kpat ksokoban kolf blinken krdc krec libdb4.6++ krfb kscd kppp kshisen kmoon kmahjongg ksig
ksim libkscan1 kwifimanager kcharselect kjumpingcube kdeartwork-style kregexpeditor kcoloredit
artsbuilder kdessh kanagram ktip kdeprint kmrml katomic ksvg kscreensaver kruler ktux klettres
kgoldrunner kbackgammon kpoker libkiten1 ksnapshot kpackage kooka kenolaba kblackbox kdebase
atlantikdesigner klatin kfloppy kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kstars ksame konqueror-nsplugins kbruch kpager
libkdegames1 kde-core kcalc keduca klipper kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kweather
kmplot kalzium ksirc ksysguard klickety kpovmodeler ksayit kmouth noatun-plugins kworldclock mpeglib
kdewebdev kmenuedit kdegames kicker-applets amor kdict ktouch khexedit ksplash kdeaccessibility kedit
kbounce kvoctrain kdetoys kdenetwork-kfile-plugins kimagemapeditor atlantik kbstate kwordquiz kcron
kview ktron kdenetwork kttsd dcoprss ksysv kwin4 kuser kdeaddons kreversi kdf kspaceduel kig kpf juk
noatun kdnssd klines kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins fifteenapplet kdemultimedia kfaxview lskat
libarts1-mpeglib kaddressbook-plugins kviewshell kgamma kdeutils khelpcenter kdegraphics khangman
knetworkconf kdeartwork-theme-window ksmiletris konq-plugins kbattleship libpoppler-qt2 kiconedit
kdeadmin kasteroids kfouleggs libkdeedu3 kwalletmanager kopete ksnake kdelibs kiten kappfinder
eyesapplet kdat kate kdeedu kdelirc kpercentage superkaramba kjots kfax ksirtet kmines kdvi kget
kuickshow kgpg konquest kate-plugins kolourpaint kmousetool kdeaddons-kfile-plugins libarts1-xine kmag
kmilo ktuberling kturtle kaudiocreator ktimer kmid kteatime kverbos kdepasswd kmix kdeartwork kodo
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
kde
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 41.0kB disk space will be freed.
So removing kde will not uninstall KDE I use? What about the other packages like kppp (yes, still use dial-up modem)?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Read what apt says.
"The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:"
This does _not_ mean they're going to be removed.
"The following packages will be REMOVED:"
Only that specific convenience meta-package gets removed.
To further illustrate this, check this line:
"After this operation, 41.0kB disk space will be freed."
Somehow I think KDE takes more than 41.0kB, don't you?
If you really wanted to remove the kde meta-package together with all the dependencies that it pulled in (so all the things you didn't explicitly apt-get install yourself), you'd use "apt-get autoremove kde".
I am by no means an expert, however I have upgraded a couple of servers that I don't have physical access to.
I've normally tried to upgrade a server that I do have physical access to before upgrading the offsite server(s). So long as the server comes back up and ssh is still running pretty much everything else can be sorted out after a little time, the logs and google.
Ideally similar hardware.
Oh and googling around to see if anyone has hit problems doing the upgrade.
meh
1. Release notes will be here (right now they contain the etch release notes).
2. You probably will have to type apt-get dist-upgrade a couple of times (I usually average two). Reason is first couple of times, some packages will be stuck because of conflicting versioning, but it usually fixes itself once you get a couple of packages upgraded (usually once you get past libc and the kernel)
Generally speaking, Debian upgrade is much more painless than Ubuntu upgrades, IMO, possibly because of the longer release cycle. My Debian systems usually have some mixture of stable and backports, and I don't remember having any problems upgrading. Even desktops where I am third-party repos outside backports, I don't have any problems.
One thing you might want to do, especially if you don't have physical access to the server, is to wait a week to upgrade to see if there is a huge problem with other people's upgrade.
Je ne parle pas francais.
Please die now.
Just because someone does not know something, and asks a legitimate question, is no reason to give them instructions that will completely fuck over their machine.
Seriously man, how the hell can you act like that to another human being?
Forgive me I'm a fucking idiot :)
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
At least do a simulated dist-upgrade by using the -s switch before doing the "real" one!
apt-get -s dist-upgrade
Sometimes, just sometimes, it'll catch things which might go wrong before they actually happen.
Debian is mainly used as a server OS, it isn't generally held up as a shining example of how Linux is ready for the desktop. It is fairly widely used in production environments, and by developers and other geeky types, and it is considered an excellent stable base for other, more specialised distros. Like, for example, Ubuntu -- which is more than "ready" for the desktop.
In order to criticize in a meaningful way, one needs to know the subject at hand. Otherwise, you're just trolling and making inappropriate noise. And really, "freetards"? What kind of "tard" does that make you then? :) [HINT: This is a geek forum.]
Caveat Utilitor
With apt-cache show
ej:
$apt-cache show kubuntu-desktop
Package: kubuntu-desktop ... ...
Priority: optional
Section: metapackages
Installed-Size: 44
Maintainer: Jonathan Riddell
Architecture: i386
Source: kubuntu-meta
Version: 1.75
Depends:
Recommends:
Filename: pool/main/k/kubuntu-meta/kubuntu-desktop_1.75_i386.deb
Size: 18440
MD5sum: 49fac831557253af404eca7f5dd5b521
SHA1: 0c013e50c769e5175024a2172f47bfa9284e97f0
SHA256: d5cf626d7be4330bc627a355afce5138f25ba5e0c8bf361864e4563cb9b741cf
Description: Kubuntu desktop system
This package depends on all of the packages in the Kubuntu desktop system
.
It is safe to remove this package if some of the desktop system packages are
not desired.
Bugs: mailto:ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Origin: Ubuntu
Task: kubuntu-desktop, edubuntu-desktop-kde
(The example is from kubuntu 8.04, but the fields section and/or description will probably contain the word "metapackage")
Er, no. Read what apt says--it doesn't uninstall those packages, they're just marked as unnecessary and can be removed.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Just use apt-get remove kpilot kdegames kde_whatever_you're_trying_to_get_rid_of and watch your output. When it says "the following packages will be removed: list_of_packages" only the packages listed after "removed" will be removed. So, as someone else pointed out, kde is safe to remove (it is a meta package) and of course the kdegames and kpilot and plenty of others can also be safely removed. /. will be the day that /. ceases to exist for me.
Also, I hope you will ignore the trolls who give false answers or tell you to RTFM. They are full of crap, and you are to be commended for having the courage to ask such questions. The day you can't get a decent answer to a valid question on
Caveat Utilitor
It's not Beta 2 of Lenny. Only the installation program is Beta 2. So that's a big mistake.
And the mistakes continue.
The advice to remove iceweasel and replace it with Firefox is crazy. Iceweasel is 99.99% Firefox, and the version that comes with Debian is optimised to use libraries and other software in the distribution (like spell check). If you follow the advice and use the mozilla version of firefox, you lose this integration.
Some sites "sniff" for browser type, and iceweasel is not detected as Firefox (wsj.com, google docs). This is easily fixed by going to about:config, searching for useragent, and changing "iceweasel" to "firefox".
All firefox extensions that I know of work with iceweasel.
To install acrobat reader, just add the http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ repositories, and add the package acroread with Synaptic or apt-get.
Leave it alone and only apply the security updates. I have a server happily running sarge that I have no plans to change.
Ummm.. you know that sarge no longer gets security updates, right? :S (announcement)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
You can use:
aptitude unmarkauto package-1 package-2 ...
on those other packages that you don't want to be mark as auto-installed.
Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on
Well, both debian and mozilla are guilty here. I think there are both in their rights. Mozilla is fighting to avoid bad press because some people could make some bad things based on mozilla source code. Debian cannot use official branding because of their social contracts. So, let's stop fighting. Anyway, this will be no longer a problem because soon Epiphany - gnome brower - will be using webcore instead of gecko. So...
In general the desktop install tasks of debian (at least the default gnome one and the kde based one, not sure about the xfce one) do leave a rather bloated install.
If you are at all concerned about disk space it is usually a much better idea to install the base system and then add what you want on top of that yourself.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Or maybe your boyfriend. Or just a friend.
You will need to change your /etc/apt/sources.lst . Wherever it says etch, change it to lenny. Then run those commands.
Learn how to work 'equivs' - then you get your nifty metapackage that "provides" kdegames, which tricks "kde" into staying installed.
Equivs was made specifically to fix this "issue".
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
It is absolutely not a new concept in Debian, it's been in aptitude for ages now... the changelog says clearly:
[...]
aptitude (0.2.9-1) unstable; urgency=low
* New upstream release. Debian bug-related changes:
- aptitude now tracks automatically installed packages, similarly
to deborphan/debfoster. (Closes: #122726, #102205, #114464)
[...]
-- Daniel Burrows Sat, 9 Feb 2002 11:24:08 -0500
[...]