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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.
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
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
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