Migration to Debian (Mepis)

highlandham · External Since: May 07, 2009 Posts: 4

Having been a Mandriva user for a 5 years I have commenced to migrate to
Debian on my secondary machine ,a Laptop P3-866MHz ,only 256MB RAM (its max)
Since Lenny does not have the video driver for the machine I use Mepis
Linux 8 (a fork of Lenny) which for downloads uses the Debian
repositories through synaptic and apt-get. So far so good.
However when trying to install an external prog like Frostwire , I get
into dependency hell, e.g dependency chain ,one after the other is required.
Question : Is there a way to grab all inter-dependencies in 1 GO , like
with the Mandriva urpmi cmd, which installs all dependencies related to
the prog automatically ?
Note: When I fully understand what's going on I intend to replace
Mandriva with Debian on my Main Machine , Athlon 1GHz , 1GB RAM with a
NVIDIA card on which Lenny (live) runs well.
One of the reasons to adopt Debian is the fact that it has a extensive
Amateur Radio repository, in addition to being very stable .
I am not after the latest eye candy !

TIA for any advice on the dependencies problem.

Frank GM0CSZ (highlandham) north of Scotland

ray · External Since: Nov 13, 2004 Posts: 3387

On Thu, 07 May 2009 20:46:39 +0100, highlandham wrote:

> Having been a Mandriva user for a 5 years I have commenced to migrate to
> Debian on my secondary machine ,a Laptop P3-866MHz ,only 256MB RAM (its
> max) Since Lenny does not have the video driver for the machine I use
> Mepis Linux 8 (a fork of Lenny) which for downloads uses the Debian
> repositories through synaptic and apt-get. So far so good. However when
> trying to install an external prog like Frostwire , I get into
> dependency hell, e.g dependency chain ,one after the other is required.
> Question : Is there a way to grab all inter-dependencies in 1 GO , like
> with the Mandriva urpmi cmd, which installs all dependencies related to
> the prog automatically ?
> Note: When I fully understand what's going on I intend to replace
> Mandriva with Debian on my Main Machine , Athlon 1GHz , 1GB RAM with a
> NVIDIA card on which Lenny (live) runs well. One of the reasons to adopt
> Debian is the fact that it has a extensive Amateur Radio repository, in
> addition to being very stable . I am not after the latest eye candy !
>
> TIA for any advice on the dependencies problem.
>
> Frank GM0CSZ (highlandham) north of Scotland

How are you installing? If using apt-get or synaptic, the dependencies
should be taken care of. It has always worked for me - much better than
urpmi ever did.

highlandham · External Since: May 07, 2009 Posts: 4

ray wrote:
> On Thu, 07 May 2009 20:46:39 +0100, highlandham wrote:
>
>> Having been a Mandriva user for a 5 years I have commenced to migrate to
>> Debian on my secondary machine ,a Laptop P3-866MHz ,only 256MB RAM (its
>> max) Since Lenny does not have the video driver for the machine I use
>> Mepis Linux 8 (a fork of Lenny) which for downloads uses the Debian
>> repositories through synaptic and apt-get. So far so good. However when
>> trying to install an external prog like Frostwire , I get into
>> dependency hell, e.g dependency chain ,one after the other is required.
>> Question : Is there a way to grab all inter-dependencies in 1 GO , like
>> with the Mandriva urpmi cmd, which installs all dependencies related to
>> the prog automatically ?
>> Note: When I fully understand what's going on I intend to replace
>> Mandriva with Debian on my Main Machine , Athlon 1GHz , 1GB RAM with a
>> NVIDIA card on which Lenny (live) runs well. One of the reasons to adopt
>> Debian is the fact that it has a extensive Amateur Radio repository, in
>> addition to being very stable . I am not after the latest eye candy !
>>
>> TIA for any advice on the dependencies problem.
>>
>> Frank GM0CSZ (highlandham) north of Scotland
>
> How are you installing? If using apt-get or synaptic, the dependencies
> should be taken care of. It has always worked for me - much better than
> urpmi ever did.
=========================
With an external prog I mean NOT available from the Debian repository
but from an external site (although labelled for the Debian distro)
If I then try to install that prog , it can't be installed because of a
dependency . This can then be downloaded with synaptic or apt-get .
However when you want to install it ,it can't because of another
dependency is required etc ,etc.
When a prog is available from the Debian repository any dependency
required is included .
My problem is with progs from outside the Debian 'sphere'
example: Frostwire-4.18.1.i586.deb
When hunting all the dependencies I should eventually get them all in
tune enabling frostwire to be installed. My problem is : why should I
have to hunt for all these dependencies ?
When earlier I installed Skype I needed 1 dependency which I downloaded
through apt-get following which Skype could be installed; which was
simple. But what when there is a chain of dependencies ?

Frank

John Hasler · External Since: Dec 04, 2004 Posts: 192

Frank writes:
> My problem is with progs from outside the Debian 'sphere' example:
> Frostwire-4.18.1.i586.deb When hunting all the dependencies I should
> eventually get them all in tune enabling frostwire to be installed. My
> problem is : why should I have to hunt for all these dependencies ?

Why don't you ask the Frostwire people why they don't supply a list of
dependencies? Or better yet, set up a proper repository for you to install
from? The problem here seems to be with Frostwire, not Debian.

> When a prog is available from the Debian repository any dependency
> required is included .

No. When a package is installed by Apt it figures out the dependencies and
installs them from wherever it can get them. It does this regardless of
what repository it found the package in.

> When earlier I installed Skype I needed 1 dependency which I downloaded
> through apt-get following which Skype could be installed; which was
> simple. But what when there is a chain of dependencies ?

Apt automatically installs the entire chain.
--
John Hasler

Jimmy Johnson · External Since: Feb 03, 2009 Posts: 7

highlandham wrote:

> ...trying to install an external prog like Frostwire...

How-To: Install and Run FrostWire 4.17.0 in Debian Lenny:
http://tux.50webs.org/tut_frostwire.html
--
Jimmy Johnson

Debian GNU/Linux Squeeze 64-Bit KDE 3.5.10
Registered Linux User #380263

highlandham · External Since: May 07, 2009 Posts: 4

Jimmy Johnson wrote:
> highlandham wrote:
>
>> ...trying to install an external prog like Frostwire...
>
>
> How-To: Install and Run FrostWire 4.17.0 in Debian Lenny:
> http://tux.50webs.org/tut_frostwire.html
=======================
Tnx for the above ;I tried to install Frostwire 4.18 ,which downloaded
well ,but the java plug-in appears to be the problem .
I'll revert to 4.17 .
BTW ,when trying to sort out the dependencies for 4.18 there was
reference to 1 Java dependency. I now realise I should have download the
java plug-in which contains all the 'dependencies' . I am learning
Tnx to all respondents for the helpful comments.
It looks like I'll be staying with Debian. Lenny (Mepis fork)
runs well on this AD2001 P3 Laptop with only 256MB RAM . I am impressed!
I also got a USB Linksys wireless modem working ,but not any of the 2
USB devices from Netgear or PCMCIA modem from Buffalo. I'll the pursue
the latter device later.

Frank GM0CSZ highlandham