Debian stable with unstable soft?

[wmHardRock]

I'm running potato (stable), but I'd like to use some unstable software (blackbox 0.61 and bbkeys, links with support for bookmarks, etc.). Anyway to get these without upgrading the whole thing?

[vvx]

You could download the .deb's as if you were using any other distribution. They *might* have dependencies on newer packages however, in which case you might need to grab even more debs. Or, you could make your sources.list unstable, update, get what you need, and change the list again and update again. It's worth a try atleast, no?

[ColdPack]

No need to do a full upgrade or dist upgrade.
Just change your sources.list to point to the unstable or woody trees (I think that's where blackbox is) then:
apt-get install blackbox
If it needs anything else, it'll take care of that too.
I do believe it will work fine on it's own if you simply download the .deb then dpkg -i blackbox-0.61.blah.deb to install it. Apt may think you need way too many other things to get it to work. I use blackbox almost exclusively on my debian box and it's great!

Oh... and I run stable (for the most part http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif ). There are a few "unstable" tidbits on my machine, too, and I haven't experienced any major upsets (yet http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/wink.gif ).
------------------
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake
when you make it again.
_- Franklin P. Jones

[This message has been edited by ColdPack (edited 28 December 2000).]

[stiles]

I have an idea (never tired it but it may or may not work). In dselect you can add a "=" mark to denote for that package not to be changed. OK so here's my idea, change your source.list to unstable and do an apt-get update, then apt-get install <programs you want from unstable>. Now go into dselect and mark the programs you want to keep with =. Now change you source.list back to potato. I have no idea if it will work, but it may be worth a try.

BTW you may want to look into the 'testing distribution' (http://packages.debian.org/testing/) (here's (http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/) a brief discription).

EDIT Coldpack's right you don't need to do a full upgrade


[This message has been edited by stiles (edited 28 December 2000).]

[wmHardRock]

I'll check this out. I found what I need from unstable: aterm, blackbox 0.61 + bbkeys, gtetrinet and a couple of other things that don't come to mind right now.

[wmHardRock]

I decided to just run stable soft for some time. I mean, these are all softs that I used back when I was a Slack user. It will bring back memories, and I'll have something really stable http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif
Maybe I'll try to get Blackbox, but nothing else...