Debian Programs

Debian offers a huge software repository comprising about 15,000 packaged programs; these can expand Puppy Linux's functionality considerably.

First of all, install the Dillo browser and the pb_debianinstaller program.

Next, download the package you want from the Debian website http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages with the Mozilla browser. There are three versions for each Debian package - stable, testing, and unstable. If you do not need the latest release of the program, I recommend using 'stable' packages(http://packages.debian.org/stable/allpackages) because these have been tested intensively and should be virtually bug-free. Let's download the easytag package as an example. Here is how to do it:

Click on "easytag". Scroll down to the "Download easytag" paragraph and click on your computer's architecture - usually i386.

Click on a download server.

Download the program and save it. Then, start "Menu | Utility | Rxvt Terminal Emulator" and issue the following command:

pb-debianinstaller

The Dillo web browser starts up and displays the "Puppy Installer for Debian packages". Click on the "choose file" button.

Navigate to the easytag file and click "OK".

Click the "next" button.

Click the "check dependencies" button. Notice: your Internet connection still needs to be active (i.e., you must be online).

Pb-debianinstaller notifies you that two more Debian packages have to be installed. Click on "install" next to the "libid3-3.8.so.3" package.

A second browser window opens for the "libid3-3.8.so.3" Debian package. Click on the "check dependencies" button in this second browser window.

This package does not depend on any other Debian packages. Click on "install now".

The next dialogue shows you all files that have been installed with their full paths. Click "finish".

In the next dialogue, click "exit".

Close the browser window.

Now click on "install" next to the "libFLAC.so.7" package.

Install the package as described above.

Now that "libFLAC.so.7" has been installed as well, click on the "install anyway" button to install the easytag program itself.

The easytag program has been installed. Now you should update the menu, so click on "Menu | Shutdown | Restart JWM". If the program has no menu entry, you can issue the following command in the console window:

which easytag

This displays the path to the program. You can start easytag from the terminal by typing

/usr/bin/easytag

You can uninstall Debian packages just like PETget/PupGet programs using the "Puppy package manager".

Important notice: in some cases Puppy 2.17 does not display a menu any more after installing packages via the pb-debianinstaller (and possibly a reboot). If this happens, proceed as follows:

Open a console window by clicking on the Terminal icon. Issue the following commands:

mv /root/.jwmrc /root.jwmrc-old

mv /root/.jwmrc-previous /root.jwmrc

Kill the graphical user interface ("X") by pressing the "CTRL+ALT+Backspace" keys. Then enter the following command:

xwin

X restarts and the menu is displayed.