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Hi all,

I have installed the 64-bit version of LMDE201403, which is supposed to be based on the testing branch of debian. Well, I think, it was back in March, but I believe, in the meantime, a new stable release of debian has come out. In any case, I wanted to ask, how I should set the backports, if I were to update software packages. What is the reference point now? wheezy, or jessie?

Thanks,
Zoltán

v923z wrote:Hi all,

I have installed the 64-bit version of LMDE201403, which is supposed to be based on the testing branch of debian. Well, I think, it was back in March, but I believe, in the meantime, a new stable release of debian has come out. In any case, I wanted to ask, how I should set the backports, if I were to update software packages. What is the reference point now? wheezy, or jessie?

I don't think so no

v923z wrote:LMDE201403, which is supposed to be based on the testing branch of debian.

Well..., "supposed to be" is the right expression concerning LMDE's development.
LMDE 201403 is a snapshot of Debian testing from february 2014. Nothing was ever backported for LMDE as far as I remember.
In the future (november probably, see http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2671 ) LMDE will move to frozen testing jessie and afterwards stay with stable and stop rolling.

py-thon wrote:LMDE 201403 is a snapshot of Debian testing from february 2014.

From December 2013 actually.

py-thon wrote:

v923z wrote:LMDE201403, which is supposed to be based on the testing branch of debian.

Well..., "supposed to be" is the right expression concerning LMDE's development.
LMDE 201403 is a snapshot of Debian testing from february 2014. Nothing was ever backported for LMDE as far as I remember.
In the future (november probably, see http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2671 ) LMDE will move to frozen testing jessie and afterwards stay with stable and stop rolling.

Just looking at the packages, I have the impression that LMDE is based on wheezy. E.g., if I install darktable, I get version 1.2.3, which is in wheezy. Only jessie contains version 1.4.2, which is the latest version. And that is why I wanted to install it from backports. I know that darktable specifically has been backported to wheezy, but it is unclear to me, which backport repository I should set, if any. Is it not possible to use the debian repositories?

v923z wrote:Just looking at the packages, I have the impression that LMDE is based on wheezy.

For lack of updates LMDE is closer to wheezy than to jessie right now. Considering wheezy's backports LMDE is in many cases even behind wheezy.

v923z wrote:but it is unclear to me, which backport repository I should set, if any. Is it not possible to use the debian repositories?

Wheezy has a backport repo, jessie hasn't and squeeze is of no interest, so that's easy.
If you just need one or two packages from jessie download the deb-files directly from debian.org and install them, that's the easiest way. If you need several packages (and/or dependencies) see http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 1&t=123323 on how to track testing. If your system is fresh (and thus quick and easy to reinstall) and you urgently need newer packages I would suggest you track testing. By the end of the year repositories of Debian testing (after the freeze) and LMDE (after the move to frozen testing/new stable) will be more or less identical and you can choose which way to continue.
As to darktable, both wheezy-backports and jessie currently contain 1.4.2-1. LMDE contains 1.2.3 and wheezy 1.0.4-1.

OK, thanks for the exhaustive reply! I really need only a couple of pieces of software, so it is not such a big issue.

v923z wrote:I really need only a couple of pieces of software

You can cherry-pick them from Testing then. Add Testing repo, install/upgrade what you need, remove Testing repo.

Watch out for dependencies though, read carefully what apt-get says about pulling in (or upgrading) any additional packages. Current LMDE repos are a Testing snapshot from December 2013, so the difference is big. If you won't like the suggested impact on your system, just answer 'n' and nothing will be installed/upgraded.