Debian – Trouble migrating from Yum to apt-get

aptdebianfedorayum

I recently migrated from using Fedora to Debian. And I'm having some issues with the package manager.

I used to be able to search for packages via yum using :

yum search <part_of_package_name_or_description>

Also while installing simple software such as VLC media player.

I get the following when I try to run:
sudo apt-get install vlc

Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 vlc : Depends: fonts-freefont-ttf but it is not installable
       Depends: vlc-nox (= 1:2.0.3-dmo1) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libavcodec54 (>= 7:0.11.1) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libavutil51 (>= 7:0.11.1) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libqtcore4 (>= 4:4.8.0) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libqtgui4 (>= 4:4.7.0~beta1) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libstdc++6 (>= 4.6) but 4.4.5-8 is to be installed
       Depends: libtar0 but it is not installable
       Depends: libva-x11-1 (> 1.0.15~) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libva1 (> 1.0.15~) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libxcb-keysyms1 (>= 0.3.9) but it is not going to be installed
       Recommends: vlc-plugin-notify (= 1:2.0.3-dmo1) but it is not going to be installed
       Recommends: vlc-plugin-pulse (= 1:2.0.3-dmo1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

Can someone tell me what I should do to search for packages via command line like yum search?

And do I really have to install the dependencies manully in debian? Or am I missing something here? (Incorrect/incompatible repos perhaps?)

I don't see any aparent reason why apt-get isn't installing the dependencies on it's own.

/etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze contrib non-free main
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze/updates main

# squeeze-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in/debian/ squeeze-updates main
deb-src http://mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in/debian/ squeeze-updates main
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org squeeze main non-free
deb http://packages.dotdeb.org squeeze all
deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org squeeze all
deb ftp://ftp.deb-multimedia.org squeeze main non-free
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org wheezy main non-free
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org sid main non-free
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org squeeze main non-free
# deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org squeeze-backports main
# deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org experimental main

Basic Install requirements right now are

  • Firefox (not the IceWeasel derivative)
  • VLC
  • Gnome3 Desktop environment.
  • Improving visuals/graphic display quality. (Gnome 3 should help with that too right?)

Best Answer

About your requirements, Iceweasel is the supported Firefox derivative (fork), I'm currently running debian as my desktop OS at work and use iceweasel every day, no problem. Gnome3, I think it'll be available on the next stable release, BTW what release are you running? Squeeze? If so I think (IIRC) Wheezy will have it. And finally, about graphics performance/quality, that depends a lot on your graphics card and its driver, but if you think of it like having transparencies, windows closing with fancy effects and so on, you'll need a moderm desktop or compiz (work with gnome2) which I think its available on stable (wheeze).

I have modified a bit your sources.list for wheeze, do you mind to test it and report back?

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze contrib non-free main
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main non-free contrib
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze/updates main

# squeeze-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in/debian/ squeeze-updates main non-free contrib
deb-src http://mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in/debian/ squeeze-updates main non-free contrib

# 3rd party repositories
deb http://packages.dotdeb.org squeeze all
deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org squeeze all
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org squeeze main non-free

If you happen to be using wheezy or sid you'll have to change all squeeze ocurrences for the one you're using.

Please, backup your sources.list before replacing it, then test it as follows:

Refresh caches

# apt-get update

Search package

# apt-cache vlc

Install package

# apt-get install <package_name>

If find trouble, please report back with output for those three commands, or at least for the first and last.

Also, if you are already using Wheezy or sid, forget what I said about Gnome3 not being available, it should be there but wheezy is yet to be release and sid is always the development branch.

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