Debian User Forums

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.

anticapitalista wrote: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.

So, my knife killed the people, not the madman who stole it from me?
Besides, I don't think that many of those distros you name officially condone mix'n match.
Some of them make an own mix of various sources, but they all warn from private archives
AFAIK.

anticapitalista wrote: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.

Do yo mean that or were you kidding? If you mean that, then I think you are not being honest. It is not the distros' fault that Windows users (and I still am one, too) are too... ahem, "dumb" to read up about how downloading and installing software in Linux works. The Debian website explains it clearly enough.

wizard10000 wrote:To be honest I think that the *buntu distributions and their derivatives complicate things a little as it's Perfectly Fine to install untrusted software in that environment. Hell, it's even encouraged.

Could you please name an official statement by Ubuntu personnel or developers that says using external sources is encouraged?
They might tell you that installing Google Chrome or Virtualbox is OK, which is true, but I don't think there are officially sanctioned
statements that tell you it's e.g. OK to mix Ubuntu stable with a testing release or older ones, nor that it would be prudent to use
PPAs as an average user.

It might be the case that volunteers on the forums say that, but they aren't part of the official distro mission statement.

Starborn wrote:

anticapitalista wrote: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.

Do yo mean that or were you kidding? If you mean that, then I think you are not being honest. It is not the distros' fault that Windows users (and I still am one, too) are too... ahem, "dumb" to read up about how downloading and installing software in Linux works. The Debian website explains it clearly enough.

Debian doesn't pretend to be like windows.

wizard10000 wrote: You're right, most of the "encouragement" comes from non-official sources but I never said that was official policy, all I said was that it was encouraged. I can see where someone would infer that from what I said though - my apologies

No need to apologise. I just think there's more to this dichotomy of "Debian users have good usage practices" vs "Ubuntu users don't".
I would say there's generally less concern for system stability in the Ubuntu world than here, but I think we should be careful with
grand and stigmatising statements. I've installed a number of Xubuntu LTS release where I've told people to not wildly install stuff
if it's not in the repos and it generally worked. I went down from having to take several support calls on their Windows machines
to practically none once they were over on Ubuntu. Granted, I've mostly dealt with people who have very slowly changing hardware
requirements (a new laptop/desktop every 5-7 years or so), and thus I think they're more of the "don't touch what ain't broken"
mentality anyway. It would probably be different with people who constantly change things on their machines and I think that a lot
of the mix'n match crowd here are former Windows users who did more with their machines than just use them as an appliance.
Maybe gamers curious to see what e.g. the next proprietary driver or Mesa release has to offer and who then end up borking their
system.

@thanatos_incarnate . . . could you please not format line breaks in your posts. It makes them very difficult to read.

I have Synaptic set to always install from stable so I don't actually update from testing apart from a very small number of packages.

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 5&p=604190

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

I have Synaptic set to always install from stable so I don't actually update from testing apart from a very small number of packages.

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 5&p=604190

In fairness, if the user is very careful, this can be safe. That the OP didn't see the duplicates in their sources.list didn't raise much confidence in that, though.

golinux wrote:@thanatos_incarnate . . . could you please not format line breaks in your posts. It makes them very difficult to read.

Sorry.

EDIT: Starting another point here so as not to have 2 posts in a row...
What I find really curious are all those people who have obviously just installed Debian a few days ago on very recent hardware, but actually installed Wheezy and then are wondering why it's not running the latest Intel video card. I wonder how that happens. I mean, I'd understand installing Wheezy after realising that Jessie is too buggy, and I'd understand this maybe in server use. OTOH, I can't imagine that beginners who can't troubleshoot simple video card issues really know or care about the systemd debate. It just makes no sense to me, as all the default downloads link to Jessie images.

Thank you, dasein!

Just made an account to post this. Instead of having a productive morning, I spent 3 hours reading those posts. Lots of facepalms and giggles. I am entertained.

BTW: Is it das.ein or da.sein?

I always thought he was some sort of philosophy major and read it as "Dasein".

So after dasein being 5 years on this forum I am the first to ask about the deeper meaning of his name? Maybe I am wrong, and he doesn't understand a word of german.

Anyway, 2 hours later, and I am still entertained by this thread. It's a slow saturday, and I enjoy myself while reading this. Unfortunately I more or less reached the end.

Fun fact: I also ran into a FrankenDebian, when I freshly moved from Mint to LMDE and just copy-pasta the android-build-from-source-instructions including various apt-add-repository invocations. Only excuse: I did this many times before and had my brain switched off. Also those ppa adding finishes "without errors". Lol.

Well, I noticed early and just reinstalled. Without wasting your time on this very forum. Its so obvious, too.

Edit: I didn't install a vanilla Debian on any desktop box for ages. Just on servers. But spending so much time here makes me want to.

mad-murdock wrote:...I am the first to ask about the deeper meaning of his name?

Ask? Yes.

A native German speaker correctly sussed it out when I first joined. And a (I think) native Italian speaker recently guessed wrong.

But thanatos_incarnate is right (at least about the meaning, if not my academic training).

So yeah, da-sein (existence/presence), not das-ein (the one).

mad-murdock wrote:Anyway, 2 hours later, and I am still entertained by this thread.

Glad I could keep you entertained.

And if it saves a few motivated newbies from borking their system, then I am doubly pleased.

Thread resurrection for another classic example - strange errors - what could possibly cause this ...

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=132918