Repo madness - is it really this way?
 

Ahem.

I am new to Linux repo land, but on Windows (yeah, I know) I have never come across such a brittle distribution system. Furthermore, it is trivial to make your own copies of an application distribution for later installs. Installing a media player or Python is not rocket science - or is it?

It seems to have taken several uber-geeks several hours to figure out how to cobble together a new distribution for Canola. Is this normal for Linux?

Once Maemo comes back on stream then is there any way that I can download a copy of an application install to my own hard drive so that I only ever have to visit Maemo once per application in future? And so that other folks can back up/mirror the Maemo repos.

What happens if Maemo really goes down? Like a building fire or a lightening strike or gets badly hacked. I suppose they have backups ...

Re: Repo madness - is it really this way?
 

If the app doesn't have outside dependencies you can find and download the deb files sometimes by going to the developers homepage in Maemo Garage.

Search >>HERE<<

Re: Repo madness - is it really this way?
 

I've actually been quite surprised with how bad the repos are. Following the OS2008 update, everything has grinded to a halt with everyone trying to grab the OS and reinstall packages at the same time. It's pretty nuts that there isn't a single mirror for any of these repos!

That said, you can avoid the issue in the future by keeping your own up-to-date repository mirror. That way when there is another mass upgrade, you can still do the same for yourself on your own network (provided you can get the OS image of course). I haven't done so myself personally, but I think after seeing all this it would probably be a worthwhile venture. Google offers no lack of instructions on the matter either.

Re: Repo madness - is it really this way?
 

That's exactly what I'm doing now, creating a backup repository.

Once you've installed an application, the .deb file is usually stored in /var/cache/apt/archives. You can copy the debs to your hard drive using the scp command or to a SD card using cp. If for some reason you've cleaned out your archive storage, you can re-download an application using the command: apt-get install 'packagename' -d --reinstall.

Re: Repo madness - is it really this way?
 

The tablet repositories are a mess for sure in the fact that there's too many of them. I guess it's a control factor at the users' expense.

Still. Windows has a repository. It's called the worldwide web, happy searching!

(aaah sarcasm.) :)

Re: Repo madness - is it really this way?
 

That is a scary looking place! It is like the back room of a butcher's shop - most shoppers would not want to go in there.

Sadly, I could not find the Python 2.5 runtime, but I probably looked in the wrong place.

Re: Repo madness - is it really this way?
 

The Python 2.5 Runtime ?

can be found here

http://repository.maemo.org/extras/

when it works .... i have no luck so far

when looking for apps for the OS2008/7/6, this is always the first place to search

http://www.gronmayer.com/it/index.ph...&system=maemo4

Re: Repo madness - is it really this way?
 

hey speedy where can i download the python runtime?

Re: Repo madness - is it really this way?
 

Does anyone have the following so that I can get python installed? They're the only ones still missing from the Extras repository. This was found by doing apt-get install python2.5-runtime --fix-missing

libsdl-ttf2.0-0_2.0.9-1_armel.deb
python2.5-cairo_1.4.0-1osso1_amel.deb
python2.5-gtk2_2.12.0-1oss5_armel.deb
python2.5-conic_0.1-1osso1_armel.deb
python2.5-osso_0.3-1osso3_armel.deb
python2.5-runtime_c1.0-2_all.deb

Re: Repo madness - is it really this way?
 

I've downgraded to OS07 (Have a critical touchscreen bug - totally unusable). BUT! After that mess with repos I can't install most of 07 soft *_° Lack of libsdl-ttf, readline4, cant find rx-... for NFS mounter. And sososo on. What happened? O_o