• From: USA
  • Registered: 2011-08-28
  • Posts: 33

Topic: Your newest happy #! user

I have an aging Dell Latitude D600 as my laptop, and while I love it on the outside, there's always been something missing from the OSes I use. It's seen Windows XP, Ubuntu 9.10-10.10, Linux Mint 11, Fedora 15, openSUSE 11, and even OS X Leopard. There's always some problem, even in XP, the OS it was designed for. So yesterday, I found CrunchBang on a list of speedy Linux distros, and decided to give it a try.

Its speed and simplicity blew me away. No bloated environment, software I actually use on a regular basis, and my Broadcom BCM4320 WiFi actually worked out-of-the-box. It uses around ~90MB RAM idle, whereas Ubuntu and XP both used around ~300MB. Best of all, #! can cold boot to the desktop in just under 30 seconds, compared to 90s with others.

In this fantastic distro, there's only one thing I don't like, and that's that a lot of the packages are horribly outdated. Chromium is 3 versions behind, Wine is 1.0.1 (latest is 1.3.27!), VLC is 10 versions behind, and so is Dropbox. Why is software in Debian stable so stale? Is there any way I can update to a more bleeding-edge repository?

Now if only Zune ran in Wine; I could put CrunchBang on my desktop then too! tongue

Last edited by soren121 (2011-08-28 16:49:29)

soren121's Website

  • ali
  • #! Die-hard
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2010-05-31
  • Posts: 1,034

Re: Your newest happy #! user

welcome to #!
well, you could enable the backports from /etc/apt/sources.list that will give you slightly updated packages

openbox-logout exit on escape
  • From: Dusk Till Dawn
  • Registered: 2009-07-02
  • Posts: 4,431

Re: Your newest happy #! user

Hi soren,

you can change the sources.list to point to testing (Wheezy) or unstable (Sid). Adding the frickelplatz sources would bring you oven-warm Wine, Chromium etc. If you need instructions, let us know.

Nothing right in the left brain. Nothing left in the right brain.
  • From: USA
  • Registered: 2011-08-28
  • Posts: 33

Re: Your newest happy #! user

I looked at the frickelplatz sources, and it doesn't have repos for Chromium or Wine. Sid has Chromium 13, and WineHQ has packages for Sid, so I think I'll just switch to the sid repositories. Thanks!

soren121's Website

  • From: Dusk Till Dawn
  • Registered: 2009-07-02
  • Posts: 4,431

Re: Your newest happy #! user

Frickelplatz does have wine (1.3.26 on my install right now)
Sid chromium is 13.0.782.215.

Last edited by machinebacon (2011-08-28 17:53:56)

Nothing right in the left brain. Nothing left in the right brain.
  • From: USA
  • Registered: 2011-08-28
  • Posts: 33

Re: Your newest happy #! user

Ok, I tried switching to sid just now in a VM, and it's bringing up some dependency issues.

soren@crunchbang:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Failed
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 xserver-xorg-core : Breaks: xserver-xorg-input-7
 xserver-xorg-input-evdev : Depends: xorg-input-abi-7.0
 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics : Depends: xorg-input-abi-7.0
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

I tried sid, unstable, and the aptosid repos. They all return X breaks, and I'm scared I'm going to remove X if I do anything. hmm

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  • ali
  • #! Die-hard
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2010-05-31
  • Posts: 1,034

Re: Your newest happy #! user

well, i tried upgrading from stable to testing and it didn't work out for me, ended up doing a testing netinstall

openbox-logout exit on escape
  • From: USA
  • Registered: 2011-08-28
  • Posts: 33

Re: Your newest happy #! user

I think I'll just enable backports, use the Chrome repo, and try to work the Sid Wine binaries in. Thanks guys.

soren121's Website

  • From: Lincoln, UK
  • Registered: 2008-11-26
  • Posts: 998

Re: Your newest happy #! user

Hi soren121, and welcome to CrunchBang. smile

Politeness, Respect, Trust, Humility - forum etiquette I abide by!
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  • From: Dusk Till Dawn
  • Registered: 2009-07-02
  • Posts: 4,431

Re: Your newest happy #! user

can you post your sources.list?

deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org sid main non-free
deb http://aptosid.com/debian/ sid main fix.main
#deb-src http://aptosid.com/debian/ sid main fix.main
#deb http://packages.crunchbanglinux.org/statler statler main
deb http://frickelplatz.de/debian/ sid main contrib non-free

Last edited by machinebacon (2011-08-28 19:55:22)

Nothing right in the left brain. Nothing left in the right brain.
  • From: USA
  • Registered: 2011-08-28
  • Posts: 33

Re: Your newest happy #! user

I used your sources.list in a fresh #! VM, and apt-get upgrade went smoothly. When I did dist-upgade, it broke with:

xserver-xorg-core breaks: xserver-xorg-input-7

It essentially unleashes X dependency hell. Should I even be doing dist-upgrade on Sid repos?

soren121's Website

  • GuruX
  • #! Die-hard
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2009-01-18
  • Posts: 522

Re: Your newest happy #! user

Check out http://debgen.simplylinux.ch/. It's a repo generator. You'll find options for both Wine and Google Chrome repos.

  • From: USA
  • Registered: 2011-08-28
  • Posts: 33

Re: Your newest happy #! user

GuruX wrote:

Check out http://debgen.simplylinux.ch/. It's a repo generator. You'll find options for both Wine and Google Chrome repos.

Ooh, nice find, thank you! That's a much better idea than switching to Sid.

soren121's Website

  • From: Dusk Till Dawn
  • Registered: 2009-07-02
  • Posts: 4,431

Re: Your newest happy #! user

all xserver related packages are being updated in sid, so the 'errors' you have seen are expected. http://aptosid.com/index.php?name=PNphp … amp;t=1681

should be calm in a few days

Nothing right in the left brain. Nothing left in the right brain.
  • From: USA
  • Registered: 2011-08-28
  • Posts: 33

Re: Your newest happy #! user

Ah, I figured it was something like that.

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  • From: Northern Ireland
  • Registered: 2010-02-27
  • Posts: 114

Re: Your newest happy #! user

GuruX wrote:

Check out http://debgen.simplylinux.ch/. It's a repo generator. You'll find options for both Wine and Google Chrome repos.

Thank you for posting this big_smile

Dual-booting Debian Squeeze (openbox) & win7