Gnome installation on Debian problem

["Piers Kittel" <edinfo-list biased org>]

Hi all

Have just set up my new PC with Debian with the bare minimum of files,
changed the apt-get sources list but I'm having an annoying Gnome2.2 apt
problem, and am not quite sure how to fix this.

I run:

apt-get install gnome

and get the following error message:

Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.


Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:


Sorry, but the following packages have unmet dependencies:
gnome: Depends: gnome-core (= 26) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: gnumeric but it is not installable

Because I'm using the same apt-get sources on my laptop (same distro), and
gnome2.2 installed just fine, so I tried an apt-get install gnome-core and
get:

Sorry, but the following packages have unmet dependencies:
gnome-core: Depends: gnome-terminal (>= 2.1.0) but 1.4.0.6-5 is to be
installed
Depends: yelp but it is not going to be installed

Then I do an apt-get install gnome-terminal and get:

Sorry, but the following packages have unmet dependencies:
gnome-terminal: Depends: yelp but it is not going to be installed

Then I do an apt-get install yelp and get:

Sorry, but the following packages have unmet dependencies:
yelp: Depends: gnome-doc-tools but it is not installable

Finally, I do an apt-get install gnome-doc-tools and get:

Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
Package gnome-doc-tools has no available version, but exists in the
database.
This typically means that the package was mentioned in a dependency and
never uploaded, has been obsoleted or is not available with the contents
of sources.list

Some help would be greatly appreciated! :)

Might (not) be related, but when I do an:

apt-get upgrade

I get:

Reading Package Lists...
Building Dependency Tree...
The following packages have been kept back
aalib1 base-passwd bash bc bin86 bind9-host binutils bison bonobo
<lots lots of packages here>
whiptail whois x-window-system-core xaw3dg xbase-clients xdm xfs xfwp
xlibmesa3 xlibs xnest xprt xserver-common xserver-xfree86 xterm xutils xvfb
zlib1g
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 212 not upgraded.

Why have those packages been kept back?

Thanks very much for any help in advance

Cheers - Piers