On 14 July 2017 at 16:35, Peter Alefounder via Hampshire < [email protected]> wrote: > > "Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it:" > > My desktop machine is running Debian Wheezy and is not connected to > the internet, which is why it would not be easy to install silentcast > on that. One reason for getting the laptop was for the odd occasion > when more up-to-date software was wanted. Then someone decides to > remove ffmpeg from Ubuntu! > ​ ​Dependency hell is only overcome when you give yourself over completely to the APT way of doing things (or dnf for the RedHats, or whatever the SuSEs use...). Mixing and matching leads to the problems that these systems try to protect you from. Source installs are similar to using RPM packages on a Debian-based system in that they break the dependency hell protections of using a package manager.
If it helps, a more recent release of Ubuntu (namely 16.04, Xenial Xerus) _does_ include ffmpeg so you might be able to get silentcast's deb package working easier there, but that will either require a complete reinstall of your system using the DVD download _or_ an online upgrade which requires you to be connected to the internet while it downloads everything for the upgrade. An upgrade downloads upgraded packages rather than a single OS Image, and upgrades each package in-turn similar to how security updates are delivered but in a more brutal way if it goes belly-up part way through. Anecdotally I've never had an issue upgrading using the online upgrade but I've heard others have had problems every time they try. The online upgrade can be triggered, once you have an internet connection, with the command `do-release-upgrade` in a terminal, or via the system updater app in the dash. Both should detect that you're running an older release and offer to upgrade you to 16.04. Though as you're running a Dell, there might be some packages that Dell provide in their default install (if it came with Ubuntu out of the box) which don't work on an updated release of Ubuntu. If you installed Ubuntu yourself then I would not expect this to be an issue. -- Daniel Llewellyn
-- Please post to: [email protected] Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --------------------------------------------------------------
