- This topic has 7 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated Feb 26-8:52 pm by ile.
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BobC
I see there are versions of programs that are not in the antix or debian repos that are available from PPA. A lot seem to be for Ubuntu 16.04 or its siblings that would be most likely to work for antix 17 was my guess.
I’m thinking the procedure should start with:
1. try to use something already in antix
2. add something from the antix reposafter that it gets fuzzy? use git? PPA? sourceforge? other repos? I guess I should avoid things that are too difficult to comprehend if I can’t just run it…
Can someone please suggest dos and don’t’s and procedures to follow?
It seems to me that if a PPA is like a repo, and its left there, the system is going to potentially install anything it finds from there when asked to install or update things. I also wonder how safe it is in terms of malicious intent, as well as susceptibility to accidental problems or conflict problems.
Anonymous
I hope you will click this to read and gauge the previously-expressed antiX culture/outlook regarding usage of PPAs.
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/search/ppa/
Beyond the specific posts returned by the search result, click to read the individual posts in the context of their respective topics..
please suggest dos and don’t’s and procedures to follow?
In a nutshell, the “suggest” must be: please don’t
Evident in the forum search results (and old forums archive, and other non-ubuntu forum sites):
• packages from PPAs, when installed to non-ubuntu systems, frequently do “cause breakage” (or, inexplicable to the user, refuse to run or immediately crash)
• affected users, instead of seeking help from the PPA maintainer/packager, frequently seek help from “non PPA -using” forum peers
• obviously, “non PPA -using” peers usually can’t effectively troubleshoot/diagnose PPA users’ random “plz help! fix my broke!” issuesIt seems to me that if a PPA is like a repo, and its left there, the system is going to potentially install anything it finds from there when asked to install or update things.
Think about it:
The active repos in your “stock” sources.list(s) contain 30,000+ packages.
Obviously, ALL of those 30K packages don’t get “automagically shoved down your throat”.
Although enabling extra/frivolous sources.list entries (PPA or not) adds overhead and slows down each apt-get update operation,
even on a system where “unattended upgrades” is set — which is not the case with stock antiX — during an apt-get upgrade operation, only the already installed packages are upgraded.However, unattended, or not — an upgrade operation will ALSO attempt to install any additional, newly-introduced, dependent packages.
Oops (ouch!), the PPA maintainer expects the target system contains, or has access to certain ubuntu-specific versions of dependent libraries,
has only tested whether the program works flawlessly in the presence of an exact set of libraries.
^— You’ll often notice separate ubuntu-release-specific PPAs for a given program, and that underscores the point:
“mix-n-match? Yer tempting fate, risking breakage, so… good luck with THAT ~~ and when it breaks, YOU get to keep the pieces {g}”use git? PPA? sourceforge? other repos?
In case you haven’t yet read this, please do so:
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/where-do-you-learn-about-additional-apps-software/also:
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/apt-fast-upgrade/
^—- tl;dr ~= opportunity to discover firsthand, the effects of Darwinism and IdiocracyNope, I don’t place less trust in .deb packages hosted in PPAs, vs hosted on sourceforge. I distrust them equally.
{soapbox} Yeah, I realize that a “trust, but verify” rule-of-thumb (not “distrust, and verify”) is more approachable, but does “trust, but verify” even stand as the current norm, or does it amount to “do as I say, not as I do” lipservice? Yeah, rational ignorance in response to an overly complex world… but the emergent “new normal” (life’s too short. Just trust it — hey, it’s OpenSource) will likely bring significant consequences. {/soapbox} In the meantime:with no internal drives mounted (nor cabled, when possible)…
a “quarantine” VM instance, or a “quarantine” LiveUSB, or daily-driver LiveUSB booted without persistence,
provides a relatively worry-free haven for us to install/explore “not-yet-verified” software.use git? PPA? sourceforge? other repos?
Regardless the “other than stock repositories” source, anyone who colors outside the lines need to understand (and too few do) that any given package, any given program, that installs cleanly on YOUR system may not function properly (might not even install cleanly) on my system… or on the system of the next person who wanders through and reads our discussion regarding that program.
“Hi. I installed ABC, from PPA DEF, and it’s not working. Any ideas why? THanks in advance.”
^—— slim chance in, well, it’s highly unlikely that anyone reading can do anything beyond “playing 20 Questions” guessing toward a solution.“but, but, I manually downloaded and used gdebi (or dpkg -i), and it reported ‘successfully installed’… so what’s up with that?”
^—— merits a separate topic, geared toward building a list of the “20 most common reasons why”The healthy way forward, I believe, is for each of us to learn or re-learn a sense of self-reliance.
Learn to self-compile “stuff” rather than expecting, or hoping for, or asking for deb -packaged handouts.
Across the decade-long oldforum archives, I sense the antiX “culture” has drifted, away from individual self-reliance and toward bottle-feedings.
Thankfully, several among the “new crew” of forum participants have begun posting how-to writeups, inspiring a shift in the culture.v—- just train of thought (not intended as a firm, ranked, list)
1. explore the range of programs pre-installed in antiX (reflecting proud curation, honed across a decade, of best-in-class lightweight appilcations)
2. (use synaptic package manager program to search/browse and) add something from the antix repos
3. use the packageinstall utility (controlCenter contains a launcher) to check for additional software available from MX/antiX “testing” repos and from other (e.g. multimedia) repos which are not, should not be, left continually enabled within your sources.list(s)
4. Visit https://packages.debian.org and type in a known (to you) program name, then note the “similar” items listed in right-hand column. Continue exploring ~~ maybe debian repositories have program XYZ (but not for the release you’re using, so not shown to you by synaptic). Installation of a package from older or newer debian repository may introduce breakage on your system, BUT you can post to inquire with antiX/MX devs: Can the it be easily re-packaged, backported?
5. Visit “alternativeto.net” and “slant.com” and “opendesktop.org” and similar sites (see: forum topic I linked to in earlier post) to further research the existence of alternative programs. Each time you discover an appealing title, revisit “packages.debian.org” (or packageinstaller, or synaptic) to recheck its “native” availability
6. Become proficient at using “firejail”, then explore the prospect of installing sandboxed AppImage -packaged programs. (BTW, don’t believe their claim: “Linux apps that run anywhere”. YMMV)
7. Visit, and search “sourceforge.net” (aka “sf.net”) and “github.com” and “launchpad.net” ~~ after rechecking whether a given software is, in fact, already available “natively” (but you didn’t realize it)… read the README or INSTALL or whatever docs are provided on the project’s page. You’ll often discover that .deb packaging isn’t necessary to install the software. You’ll also have an opportunity to see/know, ahead of install: known issues, where to post support requests, and you’ll usually find “docs+protips” the software developer has provided which you’d probably not realize are available. Debfile (and rpm, and pacbert) installation SUCKS in this regard; you wind up with the program installed and (hopefully) a menu entry launcher, but zero indication of whatever provided docs have been installed.
8. If the software has a non-gitforgepad “domain website”, also visit there prior to installing. Screenshots, baby! Tips! Links to otherwise non-obvious download sites and/or availability of various packag(ing) formats.
9.
10.
11.
By the time you’ve considered all the above possibilities, you’ll probably discover that “use of PPAs” is seldom, if ever, necessary for a given software title.Okay, okay, not NECESSARY… but what about “updates” ?
Sigh. And here we enter the realm of sad irony.
After rolling the dice, by installing a program not specifically designed for use with your system,
and never (prior to your install) tested to work with your system…
3 weeks (or months) later, when an automated “update” of the non-native PPA borks your system, you have no idea why your system is suddenly “borked”..
BobC, thanks for opening this discussion topicYes, its like a winding one lane road going down a steep hill that leads down into a darkening forest, then into a tunnel, which goes darker and deeper and becomes treacherous and slippery as it turns into a mine and then cave and descends to hell!
I’ve been avoiding many of those paths on the way down the hill, but the lure of potential solutions gets me headed that way.
Tilde is a PPA example. I ended up settling on Jed in CUA mode, and adding F1 for help and F2 to save, and still need to add F3 to exit, and have no clue what to do with buffers…
And they say not to compile your own…. But maybe that’s a better poison, at least you know its poison, and are thinking more of testing and such, but don’t think about maintaining till its a big problem.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I had already read one of your older posts on it.
PS: Why did I NEED a fancy editor to run it a terminal? Why would I choose jed for an editor? Well, I wanted an editor that could copy/paste that handles multiple files, has keyboard macros, search/replace features and undo capability, that could run in a terminal, and use what I would consider normal keys to drive it (keep in mind I work on MS and IBM systems all day), and from Midnight Commander I wanted it to be my Viewer and Editor. I wasn’t happy with Nano or VIM or EMACS or E3 or Leafpad or LibreOffice write type programs. Geany is actually pretty good, but being X only can be an issue. I’m using Spacefm more, but sometimes MC is just easier. Jed doesn’t work well with the mouse, but is still supported by its original author from way back when, and was in the standard repos, and those helped make my choice for me.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by BobC.
rokytnji
As far as I am concerned. You are on your own.
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If You break it
By adding Ubuntu PPA’s Which is a default systemd distro.
We already have the MX team helping with rebuilding packages without systemd dependencies.
Like Stevo helping me out with non-sse2 palemoon browser for my P3 laptop.Debian is a systemd distro and this is what they say
https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
I was dumb/bored enough to make a FrankenAntiX box. I broke the control center 1st because /usr/local/bin was totally ignored. Everything started to default o using /usr/bin instead. I did not bring my breakage problems to the forum.
I figured out what I broke on my lonesome. Ended up doing a re-install after multiple error-code on dist-upgrade.Ubuntu has their own file structure , places to put files, though based on Debian. Think of it as inviting a human being. Like you.They are red blooded like you. That is the only common thing between you 2. But they have different habits on how they are gonna live in your place.
Something small from Ubuntu. Using a .deb. With not a lot of dependencies. Might be OK. Something Big? with a PPA involved. You are on your own. Expect breakage. So I am with skidoo on this issue. But you being all grown, do what you wish. 🙂 Maybe you will figure out how to edit service files.
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Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problemsYes, Roki, the systemd thing is another big issue to me. I am not a fan of it, and don’t want it on my machines.
rokytnji
Editor in antix I used to play with that came default in older installs.
$ apt-cache policy ted ted: Installed: 2.23 Candidate: 2.23 Version table: *** 2.23 0 500 http://repo.antixlinux.com/jessie/ jessie/main i386 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/statusBut I am on 15. Not 17. So I have not checked if it is still included.
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Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems
ile
hello BobC and everyone
hi rokytnji. TED versions available in antiX17 is 2.23 (stretch); not installed.
I liked ted for creating rtf. Now am moving toward html for sharing amongst mixed group of pc.
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