Re: newbie stuff: debian install of gnome

[Jim Pick <jim jimpick com>]

"Pat Byrne" <pat.byrne@dial.pipex.com> writes:

> Sorry if this is the wrong place - but I don't know where else to go...
> (tell me if I should go to another list)
> 
> Installing gnome for debian systems requires the 'apt' package - according
> to the gnome site:

You don't really need apt.  That was just the package-installation
tool of choice for the person that wrote the instructions.

You could use any dselect installation method you wanted to
(ie. dpkg-ftp, dpkg-http) to grab the packages.  You could even
download them manually.  The apt method is probably one of the easiest
ways of doing it though.
 
> I can't find it on my debian install CD, I can't find it on the debian
> website. It's not with the gnome packages - which I have already
> downloaded.
> 
> Please - where is it?

You can get apt from the currently frozen distribution of Debian
(slink), in:

  dists/slink/main/binary-i386/admin/apt_0.1.9.deb

on any Debian mirror site.  You will probably need additional packages
from slink to satisfy the dependencies.

You could try upgrading your whole machine to slink, which has now
been frozen - as the Gnome packages are going to be a part of the
release (just an alpha quality preview, sort of like what Red Hat
does).  The slink distribution isn't quite ready for release yet, so
expect to run across a number of bugs if you decide to upgrade now.

Cheers,

 - Jim.