[buug] Mouse problem in Linux

[Rick Moen]

begin  ezekielk at iname.com quotation:

> The package selections are VERY user-friendly, with drop-down lists of
> each sub-package, and accompanying 1-line description of each package. 
> This is a very neat way of installing Debian while bypassing its
> notoriously nasty "deselect".

The Corel thing is just yet another graphical front-end to Debian's
apt-get, by the way.  There have been quite a few, including
console-apt and gnome-apt.  Corel's is based on the proprietary QT 1.1
toolkit, same as their KDE variant.

> And I see the "/etc/apt/sources.list" you are talking about:
> 
> ---begin "sources.list":
> 
> # Use for a local mirror - remove the ftp1 http lines for the bits #
> your mirror contains.  # deb file:/your/mirror/here/debian stable main
> contrib non-free # See sources.list(5) for more information, especial
> # Remember that you can only use http, ftp or file URIs deb
> file:/mnt/amnt/cdrom1 corellinux-1.0 main contrib non-free corel deb
> ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/linux/CorelLinux corellinux-1.0 main contrib
> non-free corel #deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian slink main
> contrib non-free #deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US slink
> non-US 
> 
> ---end of "sources.list"

Now, you begin to see yet another reason why mailers that auto-wrap
with hard returns are Evil and Must Die:  Your software completely
wrecked that listing.  Here, let me fix it for you manually:

# Use for a local mirror - remove the ftp1 http lines for the bits 
# your mirror contains.  
# deb file:/your/mirror/here/debian stable main contrib non-free 
# See sources.list(5) for more information, especial
# Remember that you can only use http, ftp or file URIs 
deb file:/mnt/amnt/cdrom1 corellinux-1.0 main contrib non-free corel 
deb ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/linux/CorelLinux corellinux-1.0 main contrib non-free corel 
#deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian slink main contrib non-free 
#deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US slink non-US 

That is a slightly modified version of the default Debian 2.1 ("slink")
/etc/apt/sources.list file:

# Use for a local mirror - remove the ftp1 http lines for the bits
# your mirror contains.
# deb file:/your/mirror/here/debian stable main contrib non-free
# See sources.list(5) for more information, especial
# Remember that you can only use http, ftp or file URIs
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable updates
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable non-US

In other words, Corel has commented out (by default) access to the
mainline Debian-slink packages, and added sources for additional
packages on (1) a locally-mounted Corel Linux 1.0 CD-ROM, as made
available by some local automount daemon, and (2) The Corel Linux 1.0
tree on Corel's ftp site.  In case I didn't mention the fact, Corel
Linux is basically Debian-slink, with some additions and tweaks.

(Their method of access to CD-ROM contents is inferior to the native
Debian one.  See the manpage for apt-cdrom.)

By the way, do I correctly infer that you've installed Corel Linux 1.0?
You should be aware that 1.1 is out.

OK, before I go any further, a warning:  Each named-and-numbered Debian
tree (e.g. 2.1 = slink, 2.2 = potato) is designed to consist of a 
harmonious collection of packages.  You are intended to be able
to install arbitrary packages from the slink package collections on a
slink system without causing problems.  You are intended to be able to
install arbitrary package from the potato package collections on a
potato system without causing problems -- with the provisio that
"potato" is almost but not quite ready to be certified as the next 
"stable" Debian branch.

_However_, there's no guarantee that mixing regular-Debian package
into a Corel system won't cause problems.  It is known that Corel
made modifications in a number of areas (most famously in WINE),
and (mostly) failed to contribute back their changes in a timely 
fashion to the core developers.  Thus, for example, Corel's WINE
implementation (used for Corel Office 2000, among other things) is
now an incompatible fork, and Corel's patches (now that the company
has belatedly released them) cannot be merged back.

That having been said, you _can_ uncomment the last two lines in
your existing sources.list, and thereby gain access to all 3000-odd
slink packages.  (After doing so, type "apt-get update" as the root
user to refresh available-package information, or use Corel's graphical
tool.  Then, you'll see the newly-available packages in
/var/state/apt/lists/*Packages, in /var/lib/dpkg/available, and
presumably in Corel's graphical tool.)

Further, if/when you're feeling extremely adventuresome, you could
(1) substitute "potato" lines for the "slink" lines in sources.list
and/or (2) add additional, third-party package sources.  Here is a
sources.list file from a potato system:

# Use for a local mirror - remove the ftp1 http lines for the bits
# your mirror contains.
# deb file:/your/mirror/here/debian stable main contrib non-free
# See sources.list(5) for more information, especial
# Remember that you can only use http, ftp or file URIs
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable updates
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian frozen main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US frozen non-US/main non-US/contrib non -US/non-free

Note the line from security.debian.org.  That gives me early access to
security fixes, even before they are released into the main package
collections.

There are many third-party apt-sources.  There's a list of them at
http://www.internatif.org/bortzmeyer/debian/apt-sources/
Note that, for each source, the necessary sources.list line is
shown in bold text.

My personal opinion is that slink, and distributions based on slink,
are a bit too antiquated.  My recommendation, these days, is to 
start with the five "potato" installation floppy images at
http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/potato/main/disks-i386/current/images-1.44/

That would be rescue.bin, root.bin, driver-1.bin, driver-2.bin,
and driver-3.bin.

With just those floppies (if your machine has any form of Internet
access), you can easily install the Debian 2.2 Base System.  If 
your machine does _not_ have Internet access, you can install the Base 
System from the eleven Base System floppies in the same directory
(base-1.bin through base-11.bin).

Given a 2.2 ("potato") Base System, you will then have a cutting-edge
Debian system, which you can then supplement using apt-get, and
optionally adding additional sources to /etc/apt/sources.list, 
including all the Corel Linux and Stormix packages.  (Per my warning,
of course, you pull down third-party packages at your own risk.)

Actually, Corel has deliberately prevented apt-get Internet access to
the Corel-originated packages in its 1.1 release.  For those (only),
you can get them only in source-code tarball form, from 
ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/linux/CorelLinux/source/corellinux-1.1/corel/source/

They had to make this minimal access to the code available because, of 
course, these were modified versions of other people's GPLed software,
whose modified binaries Corel distributes.  

...or, of course, you can buy a Corel Linux 1.1 CD-ROM from Corel, which
is what they want you to do.

-- 
Cheers,                                              "Java is COBOL 2.0."
Rick Moen                                              -- Deirdre Saoirse
rick (at) linuxmafia.com