Ubuntu – Updates/applications/packages for Ubuntu 10.10 with no internet connection

internetsoftware installationUbuntuupgrade

I recently installed Ubuntu Desktop 10.10 (i.e 2h ago :D) from ISO CD.

All went smoothly but now I have an issue. I don't have a network connection.

I do not mean that there is a configuration problem and I have no internet connection. I mean I don't have an internet connection to install updates and extra programs.

I use a wireless USB modem for Internet and the thing only works in Windows. *nix systems are not supported. I'm asking this question after booting from Windows.

And the question is, is there some DVD, files of something which contains a collection of programs to chose from and install? I want to download it in Windows, burn a DVD/CD and boot Ubuntu to install them.

I could'n find anything on the Ubuntu site. Is there a way to update Ubuntu "off-line" or is is dependent on Internet connection?

Best Answer

First, did you try to make your modem work in Linux? There's a way to use some Windows drivers in Linux: NDISwrapper. On Ubuntu, start with the NDISwrapper page in the community documentation.

If that fails, you might try to run your Ubuntu installation in a virtual machine under Windows. The main hurdle would be to get the VM to allow the guest to access the raw disk. This site has plausible-looking instructions for VirtualBox (where you can't set this up with the GUI but you can with the command-line tools); I can't vouch for their correctness.

You can always install a package manually: download the .deb file (make sure it's for the right version and architecture), and install it with the command sudo dpkg -iGE /path/to/package.deb.

I don't think you can get a complete Ubuntu release on DVD, but the official DVDs have more packages than the CDs.

To manage updates, try apt-offline Install apt-offline http://bit.ly/software-small. You run it on your Ubuntu machine to generate a “signature file”, then run it under either Linux or Windows to download packages as directed by the “signature file”, and finally run it on Ubuntu again to install the downloaded packages. See the apt-offline howto for more complete instructions.

Two other packages that might help are apt-zip Install apt-zip http://bit.ly/software-small (somewhat similar to apt-offline) and aptoncd Install aptoncd http://bit.ly/software-small (designed to make custom Debian/Ubuntu package CDs).

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