Debian and KDE?

[Fraser Campbell]

On Friday 05 September 2003 12:12, Mailing List wrote:

>   I was wondering why KDE 3.1 isn't part
> of the testing branch of debian.  The
> only old 2.2 is there!

Well there's a mixture of 2.2 and 3.1.x packages but you're probably correct 
that 3.1.3 isn't installable ... see package list at  
http://packages.debian.org/testing/kde/ if you haven't already.

I'm a bit surprised that it's still not fully there.  They transititioned to a 
new version of gcc (or was it libc) that is binary incompatible with previous 
version ... since Debian generates packages for over a dozen architectures 
many compiler and library bugs crop up that need to be worked on.  If app xyz 
won't compile on the arm architecture (for example) it may take quite a while 
for the newer libraries to get into testing (since all apps must compile 
against the new library before the transition can be complete).

That explanation might not make any sense, it might be wrong as well ;-)

> It seems that debian is falling behind
> on verisions a couple of years old.

The Debian project is huge, it builds a lot of software on different 
architectures that nobody else is doing (XFree86, as one example, seems to 
have most of it's portability issues worked out by Debian developors).

If you want the latest and greatest of everything then I think you should be 
running unstable Debian or choose a distribution that throws out releases 
with each phase change of the moon.

If you really like Debian (I do) then you can always hunt around and find 
those few apps that aren't quite up to the level you would like.  I run 
stable Debian on all of my desktops (well there's only 2).  I have KDE 3.1.3, 
mozilla 1.4, Openoffice (1.0.3 and 1.1beta) and a few other key desktop apps 
installed as Debian packages, perfectly integrated with my stable Debian 
installation ... you just have to know where to look.

A decent place to hunt for apps is http://www.apt-get.org/ another is just 
searching the Debian mailing lists.  KDE can be downloaded in Debian package 
format from www.kde.org ... I've had a few recent stable KDE releases 
installed before they were even announced.

Here's my /etc/apt/sources.list if you're interested ...

# Woody binaries
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ woody main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US woody/non-US main contrib non-free

# unstable binaries
# deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib
# deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib 
non-fr
ee

# Woody security updates
deb http://security.debian.org/ woody/updates main

# Latest KDE
deb http://download.kde.org/stable/3.1.3/Debian/ woody main

# Koffice for woody
deb http://download.kde.org/stable/koffice-1.2.1/Debian/woody/ ./

# Openoffice.org binaries
deb http://ftp.freenet.de/pub/ftp.vpn-junkies.de/openoffice/ woody main \
     contrib

# JDK
deb ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/linux/devel/lang/java/blackdown.org/debian \
    woody main non-free

# Mozilla backport
deb http://debian.relativ.org/ ./

# Mplayer
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ stable main

# Zope backport to woody
# deb http://ftp.dzug.org/Zope/woody/mschopen/ zope/

# selinux
# deb http://www.microcomaustralia.com.au/debian/ woody selinux

# Some stuff, bogofilter
# deb http://debian.ipsyn.net/debian woody ipsyn

# Bittorrent
# deb http://orkz.mine.nu/debs/ ./

# Subversion for woody
deb http://people.debian.org/~cjwatson/subversion-woody ./

# Proposed updates (not to be used normally)
# deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ proposed-updates main non-free contrib
# deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US proposed-updates/non-US main \
    contrib non-free

# Unstable sources
# deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main non-free contrib
# deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main non-free contrib

-- 
Fraser Campbell <fraser-Txk5XLRqZ6CsTnJN9+BGXg at public.gmane.org>                 http://www.wehave.net/
Halton Hills, Ontario, Canada                       Debian GNU/Linux

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