Debian Issues

[pradeep_chauhan]

Come on you are lucky to be in chennai . IIT Madras has a regional debian mirror so just walk up to the computer science dept with a few blanks and get the latest distro. Also only two CD are enough rest of the packages can be installed later using apt

 

[klinux]

i never knew IIT madras had a mirror or let u write cds . will check it up .

 

[pradeep_chauhan]

Well it s good to learn some ting new every day is it not?
the url is as under. Do a apt-config select http then scroll to india and you will get to this

*ftp.iitm.ac.in

Its the only official mirror. We at IISc also have a mirror in csa dept but then its not registered.

 

[GNUrag]

TIFR also a Public Access Debian mirror. Point your sources.list to:

*web.gnowledge.org:81/debian

 

[sachin_kothari]

i have downloaded Debian 4 dvd's.
but when i try to install it, there is no option for full install.
i want every component from the 3 dvd's to install.
how do i do that?
how much disk space will it require?

 

[mehulved]

One way is
First install the base system.
Then install Xserver and DE.
Don't add any other repositories except the 3 DVD's
Then open synaptic and select all the packages, it will keep on asking for appropriate DVD's and install all the required packages.
You can then add the required repositories to download packages from the net.

 

[sachin_kothari]

One way is
First install the base system.
Then install Xserver and DE.
Don't add any other repositories except the 3 DVD's
Then open synaptic and select all the packages, it will keep on asking for appropriate DVD's and install all the required packages.
You can then add the required repositories to download packages from the net.

thats the way i am doing it. but when selecting all the packages, the computer hangs. and changing dvd everytime is quite a tedious task.

 

[praka123]

Welcome to Debian!
why do u wanna install 20000+ packages?Do u run Apache?these are for different purposes dude!just use gnome menu System>administration>synaptic package manager and see the uses of diffrnt packages...
I know u may be asking this after testing some distros like SUSE,Fedora etc which typically installs lots of pkgs which u dont use;is a wastage.
Mind it,Installing pkg in Debian is very easy..wait for an hour or so to get urself accustomed with apt-get
Unlike Open Suse,RedHat or Mandriva (rpm based) ,Debian,Ubuntu,mepis etc uses dpkg+apt-get for package management which is better if not the best.
if u can just go to gnome menu System>Administration>SYnaptic pakg manager.just browse to see what u want.get urself a good /etc/apt/sources.list
Debian Unstable is not unstable anyways though experimental repo is sure unstable
dont care for the words they gave for their different repositories(distros)
Debian is paranoid on security.Only ppl running servers or handling very critical datas care for the stable distro.so go for testing(lenny)
for newer packages.it even gets security updates.U can upgrade from ur stock Debian woody or sarge or ubuntu(?) or mepis(?) to Debian Lenny(testing) or Sid(unstable-jus for name sake)
I run Debian Unstable+experimental apt-pinned..that gets me bleeding edge packages.
make sure u have enabled ur sources.list.then in synaptic press reload.
OR
if u want terminal-

~$su -

^^ give root password press enter

~#apt-get update

now debian(or any debian based) gets updates.so old versions of same packages junked in ur /var/cache/apt/archives.
do a:

~#apt-get autoclean

Happy Using Debian.
I would like you to point to a resource Debian specific which will help u get working with Debian:
Debian GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide
also do learn about Debian's dfsg which makes it diff from other distros and Ubuntu.may be gentoo is one distro which can be similar to debian project.