cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42285031

I think i understand adding a link to /etc/apt/sources.list so apt knows to check there for packages. What i don’t understand is how to find those links.

For example: i know i want xed, a plain text editor. Wikipedia tells me that’s maintained by Linux Mint, but the Mint website doesn’t, as far as i can tell, have a link to a repository for installing Mint-specific packages in another distro (assuming that’s possible). It doesn’t mention what i might want to put in sources.list.

The same is true of Cinnamon, Mate, Xfce, KDE, and Gnome. If i install Debian and it doesn’t come with one of these listed in the aforementioned file (and it doesn’t), i have no idea how to get packages from that repository unless i can also find a downloadable .deb file and it has no dependencies from unknown repositories, or i download the entire desktop environment i want just a few packages from.

For context: i plan to install Debian without a DE and just get what packages i want from across several DEs. This will be hard to do if there are no software sources for apt.

Is this hard to find because it’s something that people who don’t know what they’re doing shouldn’t mess with? Am i just looking in the wrong places, or for the wrong thing?

One thing i’ve successfully installed with apt (as opposed to a .deb package) is LibreWolf, which i used extrepo for in accordance with the instructions on their website. Should i be using that instead for packages meant for specific desktop environments?

  • doodoo_wizard@lemmy.ml
    5·
    2 days ago

    Is this hard to find because it’s something that people who don’t know what they’re doing shouldn’t mess with? Am i just looking in the wrong places, or for the wrong thing?

    Yes! Third party repositories are a good choice when they add specific software not present in the distros repo like mullvad, icewolf or (and this is approaching an edge case but I’m a big fan of it at the moment) nvidia.

    Third party repositories are a really bad choice when they cause conflicts with the distros repositories like adding Ubuntu’s main branch to any Debian in order to get a specific package.

    For xed, the editor you’re asking about, the git page describes Debian appropriate build instructions.

    You could always just use pluma, the editor xed forked from, which is in the Debian repositories.

    E: also stop planning and jump in. You’re not gonna figure anything out from analyzing and planning, just try what you want and solve the problems you come across.

        • IndigoGolem@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          1 day ago

          Things were mostly broken (i couldn’t get fluxbox to start) until i used tasksel to install Cinnamon so i could use a browser to look some stuff up (i only have one computer). I removed Cinnamon but whatever it left behind fixed my system enough that i’m now typing this in LibreWolf with not too many weird graphical issues. Some stuff doesn’t work at all yet, like my laptop’s function keys for things like brightness and volume.

          So all in all, better than i thought this might go.