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Location: Europe / Germany / Saarland / Neunkirchen
Distribution: Debian (SID), Gentoo
Posts: 131
Rep:
Hi,
4.3 packages are only available in unstable at the moment. If you don't know how to install these packages we won't tell you. That's not 'cause we don't want more debian users, that's just 'cause unstable is unstable like the name says and there are a few problems with the 4.3 packages.
Also most of the ppl that upgraded to unstable had problems with broken packages and so on, that they didn't get fixed. so it's better to use woody (stable) or sarge (testing)
To install the complete XFree86 distro you only need an:
apt-get install x-window-system
hope i helped and won't be killed for the few words above
you know, a few words for the not so cautious would not kill anyone...
If one is a little more brave, and would like to find out more, search google and possibly read the apt-get manpage. If one can get this far, one can come back with more appropriate questions.
I installed 4.3 from source. Just untar the 8 tar.gz files or whatever, and read the readme file. Basically you edit one file to tell it that you're using Debian, then do make World
several hours later it is compiled then do a make install. It will probably fail (at least it did for me). apt-get whatever libraries it wants that you don't have. Then if it says that files like xcursor or something is missing, go into programs/xcursor and do a "make" then try make install again.
By the way, the file name I had a problem with wasn't exactly xcursor, but I don't have my laptop on me so I don't know what the file was.
Debian has this reputation for being solid but crufty, and it's well-deserved for the Stable distro.
But... Testing is fairly new, and about the third thing that happens with a new release of anything is that it gets an Unstable .deb built for it (and this can be a lot of work). So, if you run a mixed Testing-Unstable box like me, you've got latest or latest-1 as a rule.
Today (Happy Fourth, fellow Americans), the version in Unstable is 4.2.1-9 (same as Testing). If the Debianauts can't make a package out of 4.3 that deserve the name Unstable, you probably ought to give it a wide berth anyway.
There are .deb's to be had for 4.3, and you can be big and bold like warhorse over there and build it from source tarballs in a non-Debian way that will send you to apt-hell whenever you try to do install anything that uses X, or (oh my gawd!) when you want to upgrade X to 4.4....
But, hey, it's your computer, dude... that's what freedom's all about... I wouldn't, if I were you.
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