HD Install :: DSL into Debian - how?

If your post is to make the point that the "install as Debian" statement on the main web page is misleading, then consider your point made.

DSL is different enough from a standard Debian installation that you will encounter problems when you treat it as a Debian hard drive installation.

First, most of DSL is based on the "oldstable" version of Debian and is out-of-date.
Second, DSL has stripped out many libraries and dependencies that are not needed for the specific apps that are installed in the livecd. This saves space but makes it difficult to install some software packages from apt-get.

Finally, DSL uses a non-standard (from the Debian perspective) Xwindows server called TinyX/Kdrive/freedesktop.org server, but from the package manager's perspective, it appears like DSL actually has a full XFree86 installation present.

The can cause problems, especially when installing software that affects the Xwindows-related packages and in the case when you try to do an apt-get dist upgrade.

Some people have gotten around these problems by either "forcing" packages to install, or by switching to a newer repository like "testing" instead of "oldstable", but it is not a simple out-of-the-box solution. Search the forums for instances like these, maybe with keywords like dependencies or apt or dpkg for example.

Quote (cbagger01 @ April 13 2006,13:22)

If your post is to make the point that the "install as Debian" statement on the main web page is misleading, then consider your point made.

Not at all. If I had thought that this is misleading I would have said it exactly like that.

No - my point was to get somebody more knowledgable than myself (-: which is easy to find as I am relatively new to Debian -based distos :-) to post something like a HOWTO.

I was already aware that DSL is based on an old stable Debian and I did suspect that the X server on DSL is special. I was totally unaware of the dependencies issues which I still do not fully understand. Here is why:

When I tried to apt-get abiword I did a apt-get update first. I would have imagined that this would have 'told' apt which dependencies were missing on my DSL computer. Then apt-get install abiword should have picked up the missing dependencies on the debian old repository. Obviously, I was wrong (again - I do not claim that I fully understand how apt works).

However, there must be a way to

1) establish which dependencies are missing from the DSL CD.
2) write a script which would fetch and install those basic missing deps to enable apt to 'take over' from there on
3) include this script in the "enable apt-get" script

or

4) write a small HOWTO explaining how this could be done.

Does this make sense or am I missing something here (like complicating factors which I would not be aware of)?

Thanks & kind regards,

VS

Quote (vees @ April 13 2006,14:34)

When I tried to apt-get abiword I did a apt-get update first. I would have imagined that this would have 'told' apt which dependencies were missing on my DSL computer. Then apt-get install abiword should have picked up the missing dependencies on the debian old repository. Obviously, I was wrong (again - I do not claim that I fully understand how apt works).

As I stated before, I know very little about apt/dpkg. However, I think this issue you mentioned may be related to how certain packages were removed. If they were deleted from the base system manually rather than removed with apt/dpkg, it's possible that apt would think certain libs are still available in the DSL system. This is just speculation.

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/10/12/1952217

There might be some useful information for you (vees).

Thanks for the great link!

Cheers,

VS

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