Cause of forgetting to quote the testing part in my sources.list my system upgraded to wheezy by accident. Everything works perfectly. Therefore I altered the sources.list file to a complete wheezy sources.list file. Some of you might be interested in this file below:

Hi Donls
Sorry for this I hit a wrong key and can't find how to delete it.

Hi Donls
I wish I could help. So far my system is running good, but not without a glitch here and there. I have had several systems running mostly the lts versions of ubuntu with few problems. they are friends and family and I did it because they kept bringing me their infected boxes. I love using debian but the greatest challenge for me has been getting the sources list right. I'm not sure that debian is truly a distro and in a way if you use it you have to expect some challenges. kind regards. maury

Laurens73 your list is a mess, it has old repos and ones that no longer exist. Plus why would anyone want or need that many sources?

sidux repo is one that no longer exists, look at my Giant list for aptosid.

My actual active sources.list
Nice an neat with no clutter.

Is there any reason to have all those mirrors enabled at the same time?

Thanks for your comments on it. I've removed the list in case someone would get into trouble cause of it, and indeed, the active mirrors is a wrong setting.

what would you guys say is the best sources list for debian squeeze

Generate one to suit you from here:

http://debgen.simplylinux.ch/index.php

this is cool but i'm just wondering which ones i should trust and which ones i should dis-trust

what what is a sources repository? is it essential

If you have a working OS and you never want to install another package or get updates, the repositories are not needed at all.

If you ever want to install a package or get updates, yes you could call it essential.

All of your added programs should, particularly if you are new to Linux, come from the repositories.

The ones that look like this;
are the official repos for Debian. Yours will have a different address probably because you will use a different mirror (probably) for the main. Yours will also say something other than "testing" (probably "squeeze".

As you can see there are other Debian related repos that others are using. They are for other content that Debian does not include with the install.

You can see your sources list by, as root in terminal;
if you do not know how to use the terminal as root, run this before using the above command;
you will be asked for the root password. Type it. Hit enter. Run the gedit command.

A Debian repository is a directory where you can find software you can install on Debian. These type of lines start with deb.


You only need a deb-src repo if you plan or need to compile package(s) from source, if not you do not need it. I keep the line for it commented, and only uncomment it on the rare occasion I build something from source.

More info on how /etc/apt/sources.list works:
SourcesList - Debian Wiki - http://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList

BTW widget you cannot open GUI apps as root by using su, either use gksu or sux.

You can however edit your sources.list with nano by doing:
su
enter root password
nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Also see http://manual.aptosid.com/en/term-konsole-en.htm#sux
Apt - Debian Wiki - http://wiki.debian.org/Apt
Aptitude - Debian Wiki - http://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude

I certainly stand corrected on the gksu. It is such a habit that I forget about using it. This can lead to very bad advice to folks, as the OP, who have no knowledge of it at all.

This is not a good thing.

Thanks.

hm, why can't we use:
deb https://security.debian.org/ ..

instead of:
deb http://security.debian.org/ ..


?

This site:
http://www.debian.org/distrib/archive

Tells you how to use all the archived versions of Debian. Essentially you use the syntax above
and replace "etch" with "woody" or whatever you like.