Complete offline mint update repository

[linuxtothebone]

Hi there,

I want to have access to all of the mint packages in one main source for offline installation of various pc hardware combinations.

I am reviving "old or outdated" computers so I can give them to people who want to use a pc for everyday things and cannot afford a computer, operations such as... browsing, music, documents etc... mostly what computers are used for by the masses. Now the outdated hardware's are only outdated if you want to use bloated OS's like the latest or infact any of the Windows releases.... I know this and have revived a number of "old" computers that outperform Windows on all scores. Due to the fact that linux doest do a whole heap of irrelevant computations for the task at hand and just gets on with the request you wanted.

I want to achieve more front line linux exposure/converts at least in my local area and hey if possible spread the word further afield and encourage others to do the same if poss.

To be able to access ALL of the potential updates for a given hardware platform/configuration offline would simplify the whole process of resurrecting these computers to another 5 or more years of useful service.

I think supporting no longer supported LTS mint releases is best, as I think long after their active support has expired they are still more than suitable for the hardware era during which it was designed in and many of the conflicts, problems etc has been ironed out by then.

Currently I am using Mint 9 for this function it has been tried and torture tested it on my low spec asus laptop since it was released and it still goes with no major hassles, I think it is a really robust release and ideally suited for the task at hand.

What I need to know is how to get hold of the complete update package set, I would then use synaptic package managers offline - add downloaded packages function to provide each computer with the required updates. I have done offline updates often and as a side note do wonder if it would need the download script to perform this or not?

Sorry if im raving on, any help with this would really appreciated.

I want to support the linux movement and see heaps of people struggling with their sloooow... disfunction Windows systems all the time and know their life would be much less frustrating with linux mint, I know mine was, the difficulty I so often had with Windows cannot be conveyed satisfactorily without the use of a whole heap of swearing.

If you think you or know someone who can help this please get in touch and let them know.

Thanks to all of you in advance... and hey lets all get more active in the linux freedom computing movement! yay!!!

[xenopeek]

You can use apt-mirror for this. It will create a mirror copy of the repositories you want, and then you can either keep synchronizing your mirror with the repositories or you can make it a one-time mirror. Linux Mint 9 has its own repository and various other repositories, such as the ones from its package base Ubuntu 10.04.

You can install apt-mirror through your package manager. Then edit /etc/apt/mirror.list to configure it (`man apt-mirror` for details). Finally, run it as root. It will tell you how much data it will download. It will probably be around 70-80 GiB. Some make sure you have more free disk space than that and that your Internet connection can handle this.

The Linux Mint repositories are kept online for past releases (http://packages.linuxmint.com/), from Linux Mint 5 onwards, but Ubuntu does remove repositories for obsoleted releases. So that should be your first priority.

All that said, I don't recommend you use obsoleted and unsupported software. Especially not on computers for others, given the security risks that introduces them to on the Internet. For older hardware, a Linux Mint 13 with MATE or Xfce may work also. That is supported till April 2017. You might want to change some applications to more lightweight alternatives (like Abiword + Gnumeric as replacement for LibreOffice, etc.). You can easily create a respin of the Linux Mint ISO with an alternative set of default applications, so you have a installation medium you can reuse: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/918