Debian User Forums

The major problem with repository mixing is new users assume for no logical reason that all distributions must compile their packages in a way that guarantees package compatibility. They also have no idea what an operating system really is, as for most of them, an operating system, must be something like MS Windows.

Operating systems may take many forms, and this is where beginners often fail to realise, that their idea of an operating system, is badly limited.

edbarx wrote:as for most of them, an operating system, must be something like MS Windows.

Which is hypocritical if you think about it. I dare every Windows fanboy to stick the win*.dll file of Windows 10
into Windows XP and reboot. Sounds crazy, OK, but that's the analogy of what a lot of people literally do here.
Or I dare people to use their old Vista drivers on Windows 10 and see how it works.

GarryRicketson wrote: It is true, most , if not all of the ones in this thread, were genuinely surprised when they found that they had broken their system, none of them were trying too experiment, or expected the problems, mostly because these were things they did not know.

That's exactly my point. It is irresponsible for anyone to encourage folks to engage in potentially destructive behavior "for the lulz" when the only one getting any lulz out of the deal is the instigator.

After all, mumblety-peg "isn't dangerous" if you are an accomplished knife thrower. But that doesn't justify encouraging random people to try it so that they can "learn" all about staunching arterial blood flow, or experience the "fun" of reattachment surgery.

dasein wrote: The "'joy' of breakage" is merely a strawman. At best, it's pure psychological projection; at worst, it's an attempt to rationalize psychopathy.

Yes, if breakage was something that happened to us often. But it isn't. The same mistakes are never made twice

Seems like a "harmless problem"

Packages install endlessly?


How long will it keep running ?

^I give it a day or two.

I dunno. This one looks harmless enough as presented (duplicate sources). Of course, the deeper concern is what damage might have been done in a prior dist-upgrade. I have no freaking clue what tangalou is (nor do I care, just for the record). Might be a trainwreck, might be nothing.

by dasein »I have no freaking clue what tangalou is (nor do I care, just for the record).

Ok, well just in case some one else wants to know,..It seems to be quite the "mix",
using a little from "experimental" and a little from "testing", interesting experiment, I suppose, but not something any body that needs a reliable system would want to use.

From http://tanglu.org/faq/:
Is Tanglu 1.0 based on Debian Testing or Unstable?

It's neither. While the majority of packages comes from Testing, a significantly large amount is taken from Unstable. A few packages even trace back to Debian Experimental. When building this release we tried to get the technically best constellation of packages, including newer versions where it made sense. Using the versions from Testing as primary choice has the advantage that these versions already received some testing in Debian before they landed in Tanglu.

I like this "already received some testing in Debian", glad to know they did "some" testing, but what happens when the user is using a computer that it has not been tested on, ? Or what happens when some of the "experimental" packages turn out to have "bugs" ? I imagine lots of updating, repairs, unexpected problems to be solved, are all part of the "bargain"

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/20 ... 00157.html

This one looks quite impressive. The mail list contributors were restrained in their replies.

Yikes. I fell for this too. I think I need to do a clean install to get to Jessie since my oldstable Wheezy is sort of a mess with Debian Multimedia, VirtualBox.org's deb files, Google, and others. I want to get the new stuff from outside of Debian's official servers too. How do you guys deal with those?

ant wrote:I want to get the new stuff from outside of Debian's official servers too. How do you guys deal with those?

Except for a couple of special cases, I resist the "new stuff".

Unfortunately, the ignore list doesn't work on quoted text...

ant wrote:I want to get the new stuff from outside of Debian's official servers too. How do you guys deal with those?

Debian is the worst possible choice for anyone who wants shiny-shiny. Run Arch and be done with it.

ant wrote:Yikes. I fell for this too. I think I need to do a clean install to get to Jessie since my oldstable Wheezy is sort of a mess with Debian Multimedia, VirtualBox.org's deb files, Google, and others. I want to get the new stuff from outside of Debian's official servers too. How do you guys deal with those?

Third party repositories can be be perfectly compatible if the maintainer of the packages takes care to keep them so. However, there's no Debian police squad to take them downtown if they mess up. Most of those repos you have mentioned have proven safe when used by other users as directed. Best thing is to ask experienced users here if they've used those repos.

Some of deb-multimedia's (DMO) packages are infamous for breaking other of Debian's multimedia programs. Usually this is due to one of DMO's packages pulling in the dmo version of the "real" ffmpeg libraries over Jessie's libav versions of those.

stevepusser wrote:

ant wrote:Yikes. I fell for this too. I think I need to do a clean install to get to Jessie since my oldstable Wheezy is sort of a mess with Debian Multimedia, VirtualBox.org's deb files, Google, and others. I want to get the new stuff from outside of Debian's official servers too. How do you guys deal with those?

Third party repositories can be be perfectly compatible if the maintainer of the packages takes care to keep them so. However, there's no Debian police squad to take them downtown if they mess up. Most of those repos you have mentioned have proven safe when used by other users as directed. Best thing is to ask experienced users here if they've used those repos.

Some of deb-multimedia's (DMO) packages are infamous for breaking other of Debian's multimedia programs. Usually this is due to one of DMO's packages pulling in the dmo version of the "real" ffmpeg libraries over Jessie's libav versions of those.

So, only Debian Multimedia is the worse?

dasein wrote:Unfortunately, the ignore list doesn't work on quoted text...

ant wrote:I want to get the new stuff from outside of Debian's official servers too. How do you guys deal with those?

Debian is the worst possible choice for anyone who wants shiny-shiny. Run Arch and be done with it.

Even with unstable and testing (thinking of going to one of these if I do a clean install)? Forget experimental.

You could backport your own shiny new stuff, or take advantage of others that know how to do it.

The MX 15 repo in my sig started out in plain vanilla Jessie; we've added more updates as time has gone on, but it's still very close to a Jessie + jessie-backports base. We've decided to port over jessie-backports packages as necessary, due to some nasty breakages that wheezy-backports created over the past few years, some of which the maintainer took months to fix, such as the Qt 5 backport.

I learn something new all the time..today, that having libgstreamer1.0-dev installed while backporting upstream's VLC 2.2.1-5 will cause the package to have a build failure. This is due to the build silently creating an extra libgstdecode.so plugin library that the Debian package install system does not account for when that package is installed. Making that -dev package a "Build-Conflicts:" in debian/control solves that issue. The other method is to make it a Build-Depends and add that .so file to the debian/vlc-nox.install.in file...it's the packager's choice.

As a new user, this is a fascinating thread

golinux wrote:

GarryRicketson wrote:So, Is there any way to "fix" it ?

Maybe a lobotomy?

And this made me "lol".

Seriously. I am wondering how many of those people have/had only recently switched to Debian/Linux from Windows. As I see it, they mix repositories, because they think repositories are like websites and download servers where one can download any program from. In Windows, if you don't find Program.exe at "download4rmhereDOTcom", you just go to "getit4rmhereDOTcom" and download it there, then you run setup.exe, and that's it.

They don't seem to realise that a repository is _not_ (like) a website where one can download programs from. A package is not (like) a Windows program. Once they realise this, they will also realise why mixing repositories is a very bad thing to do. I am not a Linux expert, but I realise this.

I have always been very "conservative" user with my computers, and I have never had many things going wrong with them (not even in Windows - althought, here in Debian a couple of weeks ago, uninstalling a few packages took Gnome 3 back to the (awfully-userunfriendly) "standard" install, which I could have known would happen, if I had been more careful, but it was late and I was tired and, so, well, yada yada yada...).

Experience is the best teacher.

They don't seem to realize that a repository is _not_ (like) a website where one can download programs from.

And also that there are different versions of Debian, IE: Stable,OldStable, Squeeze, Wheezy, Jessie, Testing, Sid, and so on.
There is plenty of documentation, that goes into these things, but some people just never read any of it.

This is the newest one : http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 52#p603058

You have a mixture of Wheezy, Debian 7 - which is the obsolete stable release, and Stable, which is currently Jessie Debian 8.

This is in the Debian Wiki, most of these disasters, could have been avoided, if the
"New Users", read some of the documentation ahead of time, of course there also are always the ones that read, but choose to ignore what they read, but that is another story.

https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian

So why bother with reading documentation ?
Answer: It can help you avoid making serious mistakes.

Documentation
An important part of any operating system is documentation, the technical manuals that describe the operation and use of programs. As part of its efforts to create a high-quality free operating system, the Debian Project is making every effort to provide all of its users with proper documentation in an easily accessible form.

Starborn wrote:As a new user, this is a fascinating thread

Good to know that the occasional new user visits it.

GarryRicketson wrote:This is the newest one : http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 52#p603058

Ah yes, another "if I don't admit to mixing repos, maybe no one will be able to figure it out." (Although this one is brazen enough to ask "what gave it away?" )

The "hope no one notices" strategy really is a nonstarter.

I blame all those distros that attempt to make linux just like windows. Result: windows users who try linux (they might think linux means all distros) do it the windows way i.e. download from wherever.