Upgrading to XFree86 4.2.x in Debian Woody

Jani Reinikainen,

21. March 2003

1.

Since Woody hasn't got packages for XFree 4.2.x, we need to upgrade to the testing distribution, which is "Sarge", at the time of writing. Login as the superuser (root) and edit your /etc/apt/sources.list using, for example, vi or pico, or some other text editor. Change "stable" to "sarge" or "testing". Or, if you want to use the unstable branch, change it to "sid" or "unstable" (without the quotes).

You need to stop your graphical login manager (if it's running). By default this is xdm.

#/etc/init.d/xdm stop

Remove old XFree installations and packages related to them.

# apt-get remove xfree86-common

Upgrade your Potato (stable) install to Woody (testing) or Sid (unstable).

# apt-get dist-upgrade

Now it's time to install the X server. Xterm and Lynx will be needed shortly for the Gnome desktop installation. In the next step (step 6), you can choose to install one or several of the desktops used.

# apt-get install x-window-system lynx

6a.

KDE2 installation:

# apt-get install kdebase

6b.

Blackbox installation:

# apt-get install blackbox

6c.

Fluxbox installation:

# apt-get install fluxbox

6d.

Plain Gnome installation:

# apt-get install gnome-control-center gnome-session gnome-core gnome-utils \
gnome-panel gnome-panel-data gnome-applets gnome-media gdm enlightenment

Enlightenment can of course be replaced by a window manager of your choice, such as sawfish. GDM - The Gnome Display Manager, which handles graphical logins, is also optional, but recommended, due to compatibility issues.

6e.

Helix Gnome installation: The startx command should now bring you to your twm desktop. Right click somewhere on the desktop, open a xterm session by choosing xterm from the menu list and type the following command in the xterm window:

# lynx -source http://go-gnome.com | sh

This downloads and installs a nice Helix Gnome desktop for you.

7a.

If this is was a fresh install of Debian, and you don't have any packages installed, it's recommended that you get the following packages to get you started (assuming that this is a workstation computer):

# apt-get install alien apt-utils aptitude bison bzip2 cdrecord eterm flex \
g++ gcc gftp gimp1.3 gkrellm gqview grip hdparm kate kernel-package lftp licq \
make mkisofs mozilla printtool ssh sylpheed tcl8.3 tcl8.3-dev tk8.3 traceroute \
unrar unzip wget xanim xanim-modules xchat xmms

7b.

If this is a server computer, I usually install the following basic packages:

# apt-get install autoconf automake bison bzip2 flex g++ gcc hdparm lftp \
links-ssl make traceroute rar unrar unzip wget nmap bwm vim screen tcpdump \
iputils-arping chkrootkit libncurses5-dev