Repository and other software questions solved

[psych1610]

Hey, just started using Mint today and after a few snafus I think I've got it!

I just have a question about the repositories. This is definitely different from what I'm used to in that multiple repositories can be enabled at once, but my question lies more in the "sections" area.

I jumped into the IRC today and was told to enable section "Romeo" to fix a problem. It did fix it. A little more exploration led me to find there were other sections available for the packages.linuxmint.com Elyssa repository than what I had active like backport and community. Are these sections advisable to add in there? Is there a list somewhere which might describe each section or what's in it? I'm just trying to figure out if they're dangerous or worth having in there at all.

I haven't investigated much but I'm assuming I could say the same thing about some of the hardy repositories (more sections are available than are activated). Should I add anything to those?

Finally I want to make sure I get how things are updated here. Am I correct we're to use mintUpdate primarily? I see that I have levels 1-3 on and that seems good enough. If I understand this correctly, all updates of 1-3 are safe to install pretty much.

What about "reload, mark all upgrades, apply" via synaptic? Will this then install levels 4 and 5? Or if I go through synaptic first will it just install all the updates, even the unsafe ones? I'm coming from a distro where synaptic is the end all, be all and we were trained, told, reprimanded if we didn't to reload, mark all upgrades, apply and that was the only way about it so this is a little strange. I'd appreciate any clarification that can be provided. I've done some searches but am still left with questions.

Maybe one last thing? As far as installing apps, what is the purpose of mintInstall? Can we still install through synaptic or does mintInstall just provide easier/quicker/ ways of installing? I read the description for it but it mainly left me confused.

I'm sorry for asking so many questions but they were all sort of similar. I'd really appreciate any clarification that can be provided. It seems like a good way of doing things, just confusing for the newcomer.

Thanks a lot

Dave

[Husse]

At the moment I don't think there is anything in the community and backport repos - and as the comment in sources.list states these packages can be less safe....
Leave the default as is unless you want to do something specific, like you did with Romeo
Yes please use only mintUpdate for updates/upgrades. This is because of the close relation to Ubuntu and this way we get some control over what's happening. The level 4 and 5 upgrades may install perfectly well on your machine - or not. It's the potential to break things that leads to the classification - stability before "up front"
To use dist-upgrade on Mint with the wrong repos activated leads more or less to disaster, but is quite OK with the default repos.

What about "reload, mark all upgrades, apply" via synaptic? Will this then install levels 4 and 5?

Spot on
mintInstall is an installer that makes it much easier to install, just a few mouse clicks and a password and you're done
It is being used not only in Mint by now, but of course synaptic works perfectly well for the apps you find there

[psych1610]

Thank you Husse. That answered 'em!