r3dux.org

LMDE is a great distro, but the repo situation is a bit of a mess, what with all the update packs and tracking testing or sid or romeo or wheezy or… yeah, it gets confusing. As I wanted to build openFrameworks the other day and it was moaning about libavcodec and libavcodec-dev mismatches I did a bit of searching around and found this thread over on the mint forums, and making the following changes fixed up the repo issues in no time:

Change your main repos (in /etc/apt/sources.list) to:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb-src http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
# deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/incoming testing main contrib non-free
# deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/incoming/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
# deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/incoming/multimedia testing main non-free
 
## DEBIAN
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free
deb-src http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free

Update: Added the deb-src repos to the above list because without them you can’t see package change-logs without ‘em.

And then to ensure the mint repos take precedence over the debian ones, make sure the following is in /etc/apt/preferences:

Package: *
Pin: release o=linuxmint
Pin-Priority: 700
 
Package: *
Pin: origin packages.linuxmint.com
Pin-Priority: 700
 
Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian
Pin-Priority: 500

If you then do and update and upgrade via apt-get or the update manager, all package mismatches should be fixed and you can actually build stuff! Woo! =D

Update May 2012: Getting a large number of packages to be removed when you contemplate updating/upgrading? Pin all repos to 500 (i.e. level the playing field) to fix! Source: http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=198&t=67502&p=578038. Thanks, ZeroZero!

I used to upgrade my Ubuntu distros after each release cycle, but it was never a very pleasant experience… There’d always be mismatched packages and configs, legacy cruft left lying around filling up my root partition, and all sorts of mismatch woes – so I ditched that for separate partitions for my root folder and home folders, and now wipe the root folder with the newest release as and when it’s out.

Because I’ve done this a couple of times over the last few years, I feel I’m getting pretty good at getting the machine up & running with everything I need at a pretty fast pace: maybe a day for all the core stuff, another to tweak the vast majority of everything so I have it as I want, and then just bits and pieces as they come up. This time, I thought I’d make a list of all the things I install (yes, I know you can automatically generate a list of installed packages) – because I also wanted to note why I install ‘em, you know, what are they good for, so the next time I install a fresh system I can just grab it all even quicker.

Now, a stock/standard Ubuntu distro is a pretty good thing – but it doesn’t come with everything you need, so with that in mind, I’d like to present a list of things that I think you also need, and that once you have in place you’ll be able to do most anything you need with your system with just a few clicks. Before you do any of this, it’s a good idea to open up System | Administration | Software Sources and enable the restricted, universe and multiverse repositories as shown below:

With that done, here’s the list of things you’ll likely want to have installed in no particular-order, and only roughly sectioned off into classes (system, sound & media, social networking etc.):

There’s a few other things you might want which aren’t in the standard Ubuntu respositories, too. Such as:

You might not need some of that stuff, but for me it turns a good basic install into the real deal that does everything I need. And I absolutely love it