A few general Mepis questions...
Posts: 126
I have a few questions for anyone who knows.
1. Where does Mepis stand on LSB compatability? Is this a goal? Is it compliant now? There are other standards out there as well but the LSB is the one used in the news the most it seems. Corporations looking to get into a good Linux distro are usually pretty strict on standards, which is a good thing. Where do we stand?
2. We all know that Mepis is a customized Debian distribution. As such (and to someone still somewhat new to the whole apt system), that would seem to indicate that we can apply external updates to some portions of the system and not others. The actual question here is: Are there any guidelines or anything available to help someone wishing to patch his or her system to know when to go straight to the deb repositories and when we need to restrict ourselves to a Mepis-specific updates? I am only looking for broad strokes here, say, application updates can come from anywhere, kernel updates must come from Mepis, drivers must come from XXXX place (where XXXX == some third party repository; no not a porn shop, amusing though that thought is), etc.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated by this user and possibly helpful to others...
Cheers,
Jeff
Certification and other amusing things
Posts: 126
Hey Stibs, thanks for the help. To recap:
1. SO the logic goes that if Debian is LSB certified, Mepis should be as well, yes?
2. Based on your answers for this one, how cool would it be to be able to classify packages in (KPackage/Synaptic/apt tool of choice) so that you can point categories of packages to specific repositories? For example all kernel and driver modules would only go against the Mepis repositories whereas anything else would just go to the general package pool at (insert your repository of choice here)...I think that it would make patching less problematic and a bit safer for new users...This is not a suggestion to anyone to actually code anything, just throwing this idea against the wall to see if it sticks or if there is already some mechanism in place for dealing with such a rule-set...
Cheers to all,
Jeff
Indeed ...
Posts: 1194
> SO the logic goes that if Debian is LSB certified, Mepis should be as well, yes?
.... these were my thoughts.
Regarding the idea on the wall, I never read the dpkg and apt manpages but I think that's already possible with the sources.list in /etc/apt. Could any Debian guru comment on this?
STIBS
> Kernel, Drivers and Modules
Posts: 481
> Kernel, Drivers and Modules: only from Mepis
--There shouldn't be a lock-in AFA kernel stuff goes. I've successfully compiled Linus kernel 2.4.22 on my Knoppix systems and it's been in use since the day it revved. (48-day uptime until I had to add an IDE drive.)
Fine Tuning apt config
Posts: 1193
The apt config can be fine tuned at a package level. This will work for MEPIS. It can be implemented when MEPIS begins publishing updates via deb packages, after .10 ships.
Meanwhile, incompatible packages should not install because they would trigger a dependency problem.
Most kernel drivers made in Debian for the same major release can be converted with a utility planned for the post-.10 MSC. But the preferred solution is to integrate drivers and configs into CD #1 and the autoconfig.
Package by package: test install, then install if all seems OK
Posts: 440
Hi, Jeff, picking up one thing you mentioned:
it would make patching less problematic and a bit safer for new users...
That's been a problem for me too as an "eternal n00b" (assuming that by "patching" you mean "upgrading specific packages from some Debian or Ubuntu repo"). One thing I've found very useful is to always use the "test" option in kpackage before doing it for real. If I see that packages will be removed, or more than one or two new packages will be installed, I pause and usually decide not to risk it--- I've been caught before breaking the system by trying to do something which turned out to be much more drastic than I intended. For example, I am still using Mepis 3.4-3 precisely because that's the last version (I think) before the switch to the smaller Ubuntu repos, so I need to be careful not to try to upgrade to any version of any package which wants me to use x.org rather than xfree86 for X windowing. I think. Something like that. Correct me if I am wrong.
feheeszeno
feheeszeno, please don't
Posts: 4077
feheeszeno, please don't resurect threads that are 3-4 years old, check out the date before you post. Thanks.
--
Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs
hmmmm (one of my most often used headlines ever)
Posts: 1194
1. LSB ... is Debian LSB certified? found nothing at linuxbase.org. But there is a self certification program. If I find the time I'll walk through that.
2. You're right,
Kernel, Drivers and Modules: only from Mepis
Applications: from everywhere which got a solid Debian mirror of the unstable branch (apt-get.org is your friend ;o)
STIBS