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Re: [LUG] apt-get errors (Was: Re: Upgrades)

 

I have found sometimes you need to change the location you are getting your installs from. It is quite easy to end up on a German or other non-English speaking repository

On 07 February 2017 at 13:49 Julian Hall via list <list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi All,

On the subject of apt-get, fairly often I get errors whizz past but
unless anything is fundamentally broken I tend not to worry. Now it's in
my mind though, I just ran apt-get upgrade and - as it quite common -
had the error 'Warning: No support for locale: en_GB.utf8'. Why would
that be? Clearly as I'm in GB it does work so I don't understand the
point of the warning.

Kind regards,

Julian

On 07/02/17 09:55, aidangcole--- via list wrote:
>

You don't say which distro' you are using, but from you comments about
using .Deb packages, it is Debian or Debian based (ie Ubuntu or
something of the sort).

The version of any software that is provided by a distro's package
maintainer is contained within the distro's repositories. Your updater
looks for any new or updated packages when doing an update, and
updates accordingly. Any mis-match or lag between a publisher's
version and your distro's version is simply a product of the fact that
the newer version has not yet made it into the package maintainer's
repositories yet. Indeed, it may never make it there at all in some
cases, or tale a long long time to get there, or it may make it there
remarkably quickly. For example Debian stable is noted for just that -
"stable". That said, it is stable because of it's thorough and
even-handed approach to the way it handles these things. On the other
hand, Arch and Fedora are typically up there on the bleeding edge of
now, which again is all fine and dandy, but you will probably need to
sort out a few problems when things break.............it's just the
way of things........

Personally I have no problem with using a mix of .Deb's, and no
problem with editing my /etc/apt/sources.list file if there is a ppa
available.

Snap and Flat-Pack packages are all the rage the moment. I rather
think that we will see more of this sort of thing in the future.
Basically, these are distro agnostic packages of software that allow
the author and/or maintainer to publish their software once only and
in one form. Thereafter the package will run on any distro thereby
relieving the maintainer of the workload of maintaining an individual
package for each and every distro.
The structure of them is simplicity itself. To install a snap it's
just a case of going to the terminal and sudo snap install
(packagename) and all the heavy-lifting is done for you.
From memory snap is installed by default on Ubuntu 16.04 and later and
will shortly be coming to 14.04 as well.

apt-get update refreshes and sync's your apt cache against the
package maintainer's repositories - - - get's you both on the same
page so to speak, so you now know which component parts of your system
are different from the latest versions

apt-get upgrade downloads and makes the actual changes and gets you
both on the same versions of everything, system wide

Remember that there is always the man pages to read if you get a bit
lost with this ie, in the terminal man apt-get

Hope that helps

Aidan

On 07/02/17 09:00, Neil via list wr.ote:

I have been using Linux for many years, but I still get puzzled about
updates to the software. Perhaps someone could help.

I do get occasionally get a message that some updates are available,
of course. Simple, 'install now'. I also run update manager myself
via alt-F2, again easy. I notice however that some of my programs
don't get updated. The latest version of Libre Office, for example,
is 5.3. When I check my current version I see it is 5.1.4.2. So it
seems that all my updates have not touched libre office. So I looked
at updating it for myself.

There seem to be four possibilities.

  1. A deb file is available. or to be exact a deb.tar.gz file. In the
    past I have always used a deb file if possible, but recently I was
    warned by the group that this is not necessarily a good idea.

  2. A ppa is available. Again I have used them in the past, but I know
    that this is frowned upon by some. These files do get added to the
    repository so then any updates are automatic.

  3. Libre office, it seems, is now available as a 'snap' package,
    whatever that is. It will install the new version alongside the old
    one, so that both are available. Two problems for me. I don't seem to
    have a snap package on my system. Also, this method will install the
    whole suite. I just use writer and calc.

  4. In a terminal use apt-get update and apt-get upgrade. The first
    three methods are aimed a libre office only. This fourth method will,
    presumably, go through the whole computer and upgrade all files.

Is it any wonder that I am confused? If anyone could help me here I
would be very grateful. Others on the list may also find it useful.

Thanks,

Neil

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