[nmglug] help with a friend installing ubuntu 5.10

[Karl Hegbloom]

On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 21:36 -0700, Mark Galassi wrote:
> I tried to install Ubuntu 5.10 and it worked like a charm (small
> caveats -- it will need extra work for the builtin wireless and so
> forth...)

Depending on what the wifi card is, you may need the
'linux-restricted-modules' package matching your kernel, or you may need
the 'ndiswrapper' tools and the Windows driver.

> I'm a bit sad about this because I generally prefer to stick to
> vanilla debian since a long time ago I read that Ubuntu was diverging.

I don't think that it's diverging by very much.  A lot of the work done
by the Ubuntu Linux team is being put back into Debian.

Normally, you should use only packages compiled for Ubuntu Linux.  By
enabling the "Universe" and "Multiverse" repositories, you will have
just about every package available in Debian, but compiled for Ubuntu
Linux.

If you really need a newer version of something, perhaps for development
work, then it is possible to install individual packages from Debian.
You can add the Debian repositories, and either install the binary
package, or 'apt-get source' and compile it yourself to ensure that it's
built against Ubuntu-built libraries.  In my experience, most Debian
binary packages will work just fine, aside from that they don't print
the same kind of pretty startup messages that the Ubuntu Linux ones do.
(Ubuntu is using a modified version of an LSB package that contains the
display routine used by init.d scripts.)  If you get a huge pile of
dependencies being pulled in from Debian, and don't want to risk
destabilizing the system, then you should compile your own copy of the
package.  Again, don't bother unless you know you must have the newer
release of the program.  Ubuntu releases every six months, and they'll
have the latest of everything at that point.

> So we then tried to add the debian unstable line to
> /etc/apt/source.list and then did a dist-upgrade, and now things are a
> bit weird and X does not run.

You should not do it that way, since you've changed the default distro
to 'unstable'.  If you add the Debian repositories, you should add
testing and unstable, and then create an /etc/apt/preferences file (man
apt_preferences) like this:

8<------------------------------------------------------------------>8
Package: *
Pin: release o=laclinux
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: release a=breezy
Pin-Priority: 600

Package: *
Pin: release a=breezy-security
Pin-Priority: 625

Package: *
Pin: release a=breezy-updates
Pin-Priority: 610

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian a=etch
Pin-Priority: 450

Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 450

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian a=sid
Pin-Priority: 400

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 400

Package: *
Pin: release a=experimental
Pin-Priority: 300
8<------------------------------------------------------------------>8

View the resulting policy with "apt-cache policy | less".  That keeps
Ubuntu Linux "Breezy Badger" as the default distribution, while allowing
you to explicitly select certain packages from Debian 'testing' or
'unstable'.  You can use the '--target-release=testing' switch to
'apt-get', or pick it interactively using 'aptitude'.  Synaptic supports
this also, but IMO, the aptitude interface is easier to use.

I use 'aptitude' for package management, and under Options --> Display
format for package views, I use the setting "%c%a%M %p %Z %v# %V# %20t"
so that it will display which archive the package version will be
downloaded from.  Ubuntu uses 0ubuntu1 as a version string when they
have made changes and recompiled a Debian package.  They leave the
version number the same as Debian's if they have made no changes, but
recompiled the package.

> This led me to wonder if my old knowledge that you could add those
> lines to sources.list are no longer valid.  Ubuntu talks about
> something called the "universe".  Should we just go with that and not
> try to use Debian apt archives?

Universe is described here:

 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UniversePackages

And yes, as I said above, you should use Universe unless you absolutely
must have something found only in Debian testing or unstable.

-- 
Karl Hegbloom <karlheg at laclinux.com>
Los Alamos Computers, Technical Support