I can't load the Debian multimedia repository, http://www.debian-multimedia.org/dis...-i386/Packages , anymore in Synaptic. It says "404 Not Found." Did it change its address?

I needed to download lame, and had to get it from another repository ( deb http://www.rarewares.org/debian/packages/unstable/ ./ ) instead.

There's a note on the Debian Multimedia website that oldstable (Lenny) is completely broken and not likely to return.

Maybe one of the mirrors will still work???

Oh, that explains it--I believe I have oldstable in my sources list. Correction: no, my sources list doesan't say anything about oldstable. But it shows up in the Synaptic's Preferences menu--that's where I saw it. Let me guess--this has something to do with Lenny being replaced by, what, Squeeze?

That's correct. Lenny, is now oldstable. Squeeze is stable. That's why I always track codenames. Sounds like somehow he broke the repository (or lost data) for all the Lenny packages. So if you've upgraded to Squeeze, just change your sources.list to track Squeeze, and it should be available. I don't use synaptic, but I can tell you Debian Multimedia works on Squeeze as I have several packages from there.

In case you're still on Lenny, the maintainer of Debian Multimedia has fixed his repositories for oldstable (Lenny). So you can re-enable them, just make sure the line in your sources.list says either "oldstable" or "lenny".

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Ehh...unless it would force me to use KDE 4 (I don't like it and refuse to use it), I see no reason to stay with Lenny. I just haven't updated my sources.list, because what I have works, more or less. But my system's degrading (perhaps because I've had to turn the computer off a few times due to freeze-ups), and I mean to reinstall it soon. I'll at least look into adding the Squeeze repo.

If you want to stick with KDE, it'll force you to use KDE4 in Squeeze. Unless you feel like adding external repositories for Trinity.

But you can always switch to LXDE, gnome, XFCE, or another desktop environment.

Well, although I don't like KDE 4, the problem is more that I don't desire to stop using KDE 3.5. It works fine. There's nothing wrong with it, at least nothing that affects me. Therefore, I'm no more interested in switching to LXDE, IceWM, or any other window manager than in switching to KDE 4. Why do designers have to tamper with what works? It somewhat reminds me of a foolish thing someone in college said while instructing someone (can't remember whether it was me) on how to code HTML for making a personal web page play MIDI music--"I don't care if you are hearing impaired, you should use the latest and greatest technology, dammit!"

As for Trinity, I hadn't heard of it.

Well, I do see good reason for why they re-wrote KDE. Though I'm not a programmer, by all accounts it had become a disaster to maintain, especially with how quickly things were moving in the linux kernel. Things like hal have been deprecated for udev, etc. Also, changes in Xorg were starting to cause issues with maintainability. So they made a choice to start from the ground up. In the short term, it was a disaster. But I think in the longer term, it was probably the correct move.

Trinity is basically a fork of the old 3.5 codebase. Or maybe it's more like a maintainer change. KDE is no longer maintaining 3.5, so Trinity sprung up to take the old code and keep it current. Though if you look at their roadmap, they still have to tackle the udev problem...

And do those things you mentioned explain why the KDE 4 desktop is completely different? why it has "widgets" and I can't change my desktop wallpaper the same way, among other things?

Well, this Trinity looks promising...

I doubt that. I think those decisions are more the result of the new focus of "flexibility", i.e. the ability of plasma to work on a multitude of devices from little touch screen phones to large workstations. As a desktop, I agree that many of the decisions are questionable from a usability standpoint. Of course, I understand where they're coming from because I'm an engineer - "If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet!"

I thought not. I wouldn't have cared how much they had tinkered with the HAL and udev and other components under the hood, if they had left the desktop to work the same way.

I'm downloading Trinity and will try it soon. If Trinity is a KDE and not merely a KDE-like desktop, can I have Trinity and KDE 3.5 installed on the system simultaneously as two separate window managers (until I decide whether I like Trinity), or will there be a conflict? If I need to uninstall KDE 3.5 before installing KDE Trinity, this will be more complicated than I thought.