Apt-get: Too Many Problems. Should I Go Sid or Slack?

[Sammy_Jankis]

Since my HDD install of Knoppix 3.3, I've had too many problems with apt-get upgrade. After upgrades I've had to solve problems with Locales, Openoffice and KDE. Now after the last upgrade Gimp is busted. Apt (synaptic, actually) is telling me that Gimp isn't even installed anymore and when I try to reinstall it I get:

Some packages could not be installed.

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
gimp:
Depends: libgimp2.0 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libgtk2.0-0 but 2.4.2-1 is to be installed

Now I'm sure I can get it fixed, yet again, but I'm wondering why I'm bothering. This is nuts. Apt-get is supposed to make things easier, isn't it? I know, from reading other posts here, that others have had the same problems as me. Is there a general fix? Would upgrading to a pure Sid system help or should I just dump the whole thing and go with Slackware? As far as I can tell, apt is about the only thing Debian has to offer, and if it doesn't work, what's the point? I've set up a Slack system before, and dependency hell wasn't any worse than apt has been so far.

[unamiccia]

This thread on the limited uses of apt-get upgrade, and some strategies for keeping it under control, may be helpful. Also search the forum for "synaptic" -- a number of people have reported problems using it as an apt front-end. (I use it and haven't had any problems -- but I've never apt-get upgraded with it, either.)

Bottom line: Apt-get upgrade is a little dicey in Knoppix, and moving to a pure Debian installation is the way to go to avoid problems with it. That said, consider whether you really need every last little piece of your distribution to be perfectly up to date . . . I prefer the control of upgrading packages selectively, either at the command line or using Synaptic.

[mzilikazi]

Since my HDD install of Knoppix 3.3, I've had too many problems with apt-get upgrade. After upgrades I've had to solve problems with Locales, Openoffice and KDE. Now after the last upgrade Gimp is busted. Apt (synaptic, actually) is telling me that Gimp isn't even installed anymore and when I try to reinstall it I get:

Some packages could not be installed.

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
gimp:
Depends: libgimp2.0 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libgtk2.0-0 but 2.4.2-1 is to be installed

apt-get install libgimp2.0 libgtk2.0-0 gimp

You had locale problems because Knopppix has them all more or less. Solution:

apt-get install localepurge

KDE I dunno- it's a PITA always wanting to remove itself. IIRC you can just let it do it then reinstall it. Of course if you're on dialup that isn't much help. A better answer is to use XFCE4

What's wrong w/ OO? I have just done an upgrade to SID and had no problems so it all works.

[Sammy_Jankis]

This thread on the limited uses of apt-get upgrade, and some strategies for keeping it under control, may be helpful. Also search the forum for "synaptic" -- a number of people have reported problems using it as an apt front-end. (I use it and haven't had any problems -- but I've never apt-get upgraded with it, either.)

Bottom line: Apt-get upgrade is a little dicey in Knoppix, and moving to a pure Debian installation is the way to go to avoid problems with it. That said, consider whether you really need every last little piece of your distribution to be perfectly up to date . . . I prefer the control of upgrading packages selectively, either at the command line or using Synaptic.

Thanks for your reply. AFA needing my system entirely up to date, absolutely not. I'm of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school. Unfortunately in the month or so I've been putting this system together it has been broke, to one degree or another. The HD installation guide I read and followed recommended an upgrade after the installation, and I've been playing catch-up ever since.

Other posts I've read recommended regular, weekly, update/upgrade/dist-upgrades. This definitely doesn't seem like a good idea, but perhaps with a pure system it's not so dangerous. After all, if it's so risky, what purpose does it serve? Why would anyone ever use it (upgrade, that is)?

It's been several years since the Slack system I set up. I abandoned that system principally because ghostscript printing simply wasn't practical. This time around I wanted to get a working system together as quickly and easily as possible to check out whether I could now do everything I needed under Linux. Knoppix was a great way to do that. It's looking like Linux can do it all now, so I have to figure out if Debian is really for me, and whether Knoppix can be truly tamed for the hard drive.

I knew nothing about Debian before Knoppix. I still haven't figured it out. I've had to install a lot of things which aren't available through Debian, like mplayer. I've used apt to resolve any dependency problems which arose during those installations, but I didn't bother to "debianize" those source packages before installing them, so I've adulterated my system already. Then there's KDE which developed a bug after a recent upgrade. The KDE site has a patch to resolve the bug, but I can't patch a binary, right? I have to get the sources and patch them. Then there's mplayer which recommends the use of Gatos video drivers, which in turn recommends, for all Debian users, a fresh installation of X from the sources.

On the plus side, apt is a lot of fun to use, when it works properly.

[Sammy_Jankis]

What's wrong w/ OO? I have just done an upgrade to SID and had no problems so it all works.

According to the posts I checked out when I had the OO upgrade problem, the OO version which is included on the 3.3 Knoppix disc (and all others, I assume) was buggy due to its being stripped down to fit the severe space restrictions on the Knoppix CD. This was why the menu system, although I chose the English version, still had a few menu items in German. I did a purge and reinstalled a complete version, which now functions perfectly. Synaptic, however, still shows a strange, ghosted entry for the old version of OO. It's not a residual config, and I can't see any way to get rid of it.