Hello, i'm a tad bit new to debian but am interested in using it as one of my main os's. Debian squeeze is suffering a few problems with my laptop monitor, resolution wise, and i've been suggested to upgrade x11 and the kernel through backports. My problem is i don't think the backports websight is clear enough.
I run Debian squeeze. In the instructions, it says to add this line to your sources.list.
Now, it says squeeze, so my question is; does that mean the packages from this are intended for squeeze?
or is this an old repo and i should change squeeze in that line to wheezy?

2nd question
I'm running 6.0, but i noticed the current stable is 6.0.2.1. So it's had a couple of tweaks since i bought my cds, Is there a command to update these things. aptitude upgrade? etc

p.s.
sorry bout my unusual question format, but it thought it'd save making two threads when i'm sure these are both simple answers.

You're running stable (squeeze) so there should be no reference to wheezy (testing) in your sources.list. You should almost never mix stable and testing/unstable/experimental repos unless you know what you're doing (i.e. backporting your own packages).

Set up the backports repo following the instructions here: http://backports-master.debian.org/Instructions/

Then

And install packages using

It used to be a bit more hassle, but since it went official it's just a case of adding the repo to your sources.list.


Don't worry about debian release version numbers. The following will always keep your system up to date:

(as root)

thankyou, lastly, if i do that update, it wont update from the backports source i add will it?

No, but to be sure post the output of

(after adding the backports repo and updating the sources).

Hello, sorry bout the late reply, i did a reinstall to a logicle partition and had issues, but i've fixed it all up now and am back into the Debian action, thanks for the help guys. anyways, i've just added the backports, and here is the apt-cache policy. what is this for?

Hi Knightron,
Just a thought: it's a common assumption (one that I made as well) that using stable was the safest bet for beginners regardless of their situation. My opinion (FWIW) is that unless you have very special needs (such as running a mission-critical server with 250 clients) that testing (and some would say Sid) is the way to go. Why go through the song and dance of backports to Squeeze unless you have a very good reason for using the stable version. If you can't think of one, I'd say that you'll be much better off (more and more as time goes by and Squeeze gets older) tracking testing than sticking with stable. Sooner or later you'll probably make this decision on your own.
ciao,
jdk

It shows that the backports repo has a priority of 100 which is the default. You can install from backports, but your system won't upgrade to every package in backports.


Yes and no - I would say yes if you're someone that doesn't mind tweaking, the inevitable breakage and in the case of testing possibly running a mixed system, but for noobs, not yet. It's best to use stable and backports first and familiarise with that than jump straight to testing or unstable.

ok thanks for the help and advice guys. For starters, i wouldn't say i'm a complete noob, i've been using linux for about a month. Either way, I can think of one thing, i rely on prepaid mobile broadband and unfortunately live in a rural area and thus depend on the most dominant and expensive mobile provider, in Australia, so ideally i'm not ready for a rolling release distro yet. (had to think of something, the way you phrased it, made it sound like a challenge).
hopefully lastly, i'd like to upgrade my kernel and xorg. What would i put for the kernel? and would this be fine for xorg?

Sorry to disagree, Caravel, but that's what makes horse races. I in many years of sticking with testing and a fair bit of pinning to Sid especially for multimedia stuff, I can count on one mangled hand the number of times I had any non-trivial problems. Testing gently encourages you to search about a bit for answers but you need to do that for just about any release of any distro. Obviously this is only my experience but I know many people who would agree.
ciao,
jdk