it seem i cant install any software in debian? do i have to log in as root or can i just sudo apt-get logged in as a user?

and one more thing i installed using the minaiul cd and it said i could dl the secerity updates or sytem updates and someone point me in the right direction? HELP


sorry im a n00b at linux

use Synaptic to install packages in Debian, sudo may or may not work the way it works in ubuntu, in the traditional way Linux has root and users set up is there is a clearly defined difference in the root account and user accounts, and to do any changes system wide you will need root access so a root password is not the same as that first user account like ubuntu has...

Welcome and don’t worry. We all have to start somewhere.

Normally in Debian you need to be root to install something. Open a console and type su and then the root password. You can then use

or alternatively you can use

You may find aptitude easier if you’re just starting out.

You can take the approach of using sudo. However you’ll need to install sudo first (the irony) and then set it up to allow a user to run apt-get. This is how it tends to work in Ubuntu. The only difference is that Ubuntu has this set up out of the box and Debian doesn’t. Personally, I prefer to do installs as root only.

For security updates you need to make sure that the file /etc/apt/sources.list contains reference to security updates.

As a normal user type

The output should contain something like the following;

In your case it may say stable rather than etch. If there’s no mention of security then use su to change to root and edit the file to include these lines. From now on whenever you update you’ll get the security updates as well.

Hope that helps

For someone as new as you are, I would recommend using Synaptic.

I would suggest that too (Synaptic). I think you will find aptitude too difficult on the first look. Synaptic is easier to handle.

im not competely a n00b ive used slackware for about 6 months so i know little.....i like using the apt-get to install BUT im still unclear on how to update my debian and do secerity updates

i did what someone said and there was no file named that

Synaptic is for babies and Ubuntu users. Do it right ... use aptitude, but use it from the command line rather than the ncurses interface. First issue is your /etc/apt/sources.list file. It should look something like this.
That assumes you are using Etch. Once that's verified:
# aptitude keep-all
# aptitude update
... and you should be set.

If there is anything you don't understand about that, you need to get a little better general grasp of just how Debian works. There are a ton of introductory essays out there. Here is mine.

this is what my sources list looks like


#
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r0 _Etch_ - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20070407-11:29]/ etch contrib main

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r0 _Etch_ - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20070407-11:29]/ etch contrib main

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main

# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib
# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib


???

Make it look like the one I gave you. If you are not in the US, change the country code in the URLs

Sorry if we don't wanna start a console or switch to command line every time we need to upgrade packages...

Put a # in front of the second cdrom statement (to match the first one) and see what happens.