Hi. I went to the XFCE/Oscillation website to check out the new version 4.2. I'm running Libranet with a recompiled kernel and all the extra software stripped off in order to get some life from an old P166MMX 64MB Toshiba. IceWM is OK but I wanted a change. The website says I have to install libgtk2.0 first, but if I do that with Apt or Synaptic, it wants to remove Xadminmenu, adminmenu, Firefox, Thunderbird, and about a dozen other programs that I use. Is this a situation where I'll have to re-install everything after I put in XFCE? Libranet really works nice on this laptop and Xadminmenu is great. A stripped down kernel is what I wanted and it's so easy with Libranet. Any ideas how I can get XFCE 4.2 on my machine without destroying it? Thanks!

there is a howto for debian here

http://www.os-works.com/view/debian/

if that doesnt work then there is graphical and very easy to use installer

http://www.os-cillation.com/article.php?sid=42

Thank you very much, heema! I will try this out asap and let you know.
Craigl.

no problem

yeah post back ur results

I upgraded my xfce4.0 to 4.2 as outlined at http://www.os-works.com/view/debian/. When I start up xfce4.2, I get a message saying something like"could not lookup internet address for <my-machine-name>, you may want to edit /etc/hosts".

I know that can edit this but I'm wondering why this filename does not match what is in /etc/hostname, i.e. the name I specified during the installation?

Other than just editing /etc/hosts, is there a "debian" way of fixing this?

heema:
Meant to answer you sooner, but the results really frustrated me. First off, you need to have your system configured to "testing". Well, you can guess what happened....yeah, it broke. Same old story....start with a Debian "spinoff",
upgrade it and something will break. If you're single and have 24 hrs. a day to fix it, it can be done, but I said to heck with it. I don't have much spare time.Thanks, anyway. Maybe I will try to just upgrade Icewm and learn to like it.

Err craig1 did you create a preferences file with the entry (below) as have been been instructed by the os-works guys before you tried installing XFce 4.2? i.e.

Contents of /etc/apt/preferences
Package: *
Pin: origin www.os-works.com
Pin-Priority: 999

I'm tracking Debian Sid/Scud i.e. Unstable/Experimental but Xfld Desktop's install went fine on me system despite the reference to it being targeted at those on Testing aka Sarge.

This is what my /etc/apt/preferences looks like:

Package: *
Pin: origin www.os-works.com
Pin-Priority: 999

Package: *
Pin: release o=xmixahlx
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release a=experimental
Pin-Priority: 101

And the following is my apt.conf

APT:efault-Release "unstable";
APT::Cache-Limit 10000000;
Apt::Get::Purge;
APT::Clean-Installed;
APT::Get::Fix-Broken;
APT::Get::Fix-Missing;
APT::Get::Show-Upgraded "true";

yeah, actually I did that the very first time, but maybe I had already trashed my system while upgrading to testing. I also believe the first time I did an apt-get update, I didn't comment out the sid repo from the sources.list. This could have broken it, too. Anyway, I have Libranet up and running on this machine right now and for some reason this last install actually installed the xfce that ships with Libranet 2.8.1. Maybe I will investigate upgrading that, AFTER I DO SOME REASEARCH. Thank you very kindly for your help. I don't want to have to re-install Libranet again because I've had to go through 2 kernel recompiles, (1 to get sound working, 1 to get pcmcia-cs modules installed). Don't want to go through that again. I'll post with results if I can get some courage to "poke around".

Oh, I just noticed you're running a pure debian install? Maybe that's why you had luck and I didn't. I will never consider myself a real debian user until I install pure debian. Actually, I installed woody 3.0 a year ago but screwed it up with a kernel recompile and I would probably install it again after I learned what I did wrong the first time. Again, thanks!