Hi

I think apt-get is a great tool, but is it really a great tool if it doesnt do what its created for ? At this time i think apt-get is a mess and what i mean by that is that when i try to install something through apt-get it never really gets the application installed. When i choose for example kdevelop3, it resolves the dependencies, but when its about to install it only complains about that it couldnt after all resolve the dependencies. Its also times when it has downloaded all the packages and there are conflicts and more.

Here i what happened when i tryed to install kdevelop3:
kdevelop3:
Depends: kdelibs4c2a but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libacl1 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libart-2.0-2 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libattr1 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libaudio2 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libc6 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libdb4.3 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libfontconfig1 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libfreetype6 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libgamin0 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libgcc1 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libice6 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libidn11 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libjpeg62 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libpcre3 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libpng12-0 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libqt3-mt but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libsm6 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libstdc++6 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libx11-6 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libxcursor1 but it is not going to be installed lo
Depends: libxext6 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libxft2 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libxi6 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libxinerama1 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libxrandr2 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libxrender1 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libxt6 but it is not going to be installed
Depends: zlib1g but it is not going to be installed
Depends: debconf but it is not going to be installed or
debconf-2.0
Depends: autoconf but it is not going to be installed
Depends: automaken
Depends: kdebase-bin but it is not going to be installed
Depends: kdevelop3-data but it is not going to be installed
Depends: kdevelop3-plugins but it is not going to be installed

Suddenly it wants me to install every package manually? Heh, hell no when you look at the packages it depends and if i really install them what is apt gonna do? Why am i getting this? I am using the ubuntu repositories and i have also tried other repositories. Could someone please help me here.

You've discovered one reason why many of us love Debian Stable. Yes, apt-get is only as good as the quality of the software repositories it draws from. Debian Stable is unique in the high quality of its repositories.

Ubuntu, like Debian Unstable, tries to offer the latest and greatest versions of software packages, but this can't be done at the same time as guaranteeing that software dependencies will be clean.

That said, I don't think Ubuntu's repositories are THAT bad. Are you using a straight Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu system? Or are you using an Ubuntu based distribution (like Mepis)?

As IsaacKuo said, things like that happen when you use Debian derivatives instead of the real thing.

They also happen when you mix package management systems. If you sometimes compile your own, sometimes use Synaptic, sometimes apt-get, etc ... you can gradually develop a real mess as far as dependencies are concerned. Better to use only one method. Aptitude can straighten this out fairly easily, but I don't know if Ubuntu has that ot not.

On my ubuntu machine, I can ask it to install kdevelop3 without getting any of those problems. What does your sources.list look like?

Im currently using ubuntu 6.06.

Hm, i have tried some of the repositories in the thread "Post your sources.list" on LQ. Now i currently dont have anything in my sources.list because there seemd to be errors and dependencies problems all over.

It sounds like you've seriously confused your Ubuntu system by using Debian repositories. Yet another thing I dislike about Ubuntu--the potential for messing up users because of it doesn't use the Debian repositories.

Since you've mixed together Ubuntu and Debian packages, probably the only real solution is to restart with a clean install. Use Ubuntu repositories with Ubuntu. Use Debian repositories with Debian. Don't mix them up!

If you want something more up-to-date than Debian Stable but want to keep using Debian repositories, then try using Debian Etch.

[edit added:]Just to clarify, the "Post your sources.list" thread is in the DEBIAN forum, not the Ubuntu forum. Not surprisingly, all of those sources.list examples are for DEBIAN systems. Not Ubuntu.

I thought ubuntu used the same package management system as debian, so i thought that repository would be compatible with ubuntu, i guess its not. I did remove all entries in the sources.list file and recreated it with ubuntu repositories, but i got the same errors, i dont know why its so complicated to install such a tool in ubuntu.

I will be trying debian etch/sid, thanks for that tip.

Ubuntu has had no trouble installing on my machines. And it does use the same package management system as debian (dpkg/apt).

The apt and dpkg software which Ubuntu uses is the same as Debian's. However, the software repositories are completely independent, and maintained independently. A lot of the same package names exist in both repositories, but they're not the same and depend on different packages and different packages depend on them.

This means that if you install some software from the wrong repository, then the entire system of dependency tracking gets confused. You need to remove the bad packages, not just the bad source lines. Right now, your system is a tangled mess of conflicting packages and broken dependencies. The only practical way to fix it is a clean install.

I have had no trouble with Apt whatsoever apart from "error" when downloading from NZ mirrors. Once I changed to more reliable mirrors everything was good.

Although when I was using synaptic with FC5 I was constantly suffering from dependancy hell...So all in all I feel that Apt on debian systems is pretty good, but thats just my opinion...

Originally posted by hondo
I had serious issues with Knoppix because it used a mixture of testing/unstable. Use Etch or use Sid but don't mix them.

I was not able to install debian etch/sid. When the installaion started it couldnt detect my CD-ROM. I also tried the 2.4 kernel and then it found my CD-ROM, but not my network interface card.

Then why not do a clean re-install of Ubuntu?

You cant really compare pure debian to ubuntu can you?