How to install Backports in Debian/Ubuntu/Mint 

Thanks!

Thank you very much :)

@@Doriandotslash Great video but can you show me how to upgrade my buster version to bullseye? Thanks ahead

@@TheGagi82 Sorry I missed this comment when you posted You can edit your /etc/apt/sources.list and change everywhere that says buster to bullseye. Save it, and run 'sudo apt update', then 'sudo apt full-upgrade'. Once that's all done, restart and you should be running Bullseye! Make sure you do backups before you do this if you want to keep anything, just in case anything goes wrong.

@@Doriandotslash thank you already upgraded to bullseye

Thanks! Gnome can be updated yes, or you can just run the Bullseye repos to get the newest Gnome (3.36). But to be honest, I still run Gnome 3.30 and it runs very well. No issues at all. Remember that Debian uses the most stable packages, not the newest one. It's all about stability.

Thanks Julio! But I should clear something up though. Testing repos are not unstable at all. I used the Buster testing repo for a very long time via Q4OS and never had issues. There may be small issues, but nothing drastic. Now unstable/sid branch is different. Further, the backports repo is even more stable than testing because it's tested by compiling on a stable system. If for some reason your backport package has a bug, it won't affect the rest of your system. You can simply remove it and reinstall the stable version, or wait until a fix is pushed.

Thank you :)

@@Doriandotslash You're very welcome, thanks for making the video's. Im really enjoying it and Im learning something without having to do it myself.

Nice to hear, thank you!

Very much so!

Yes, I believe Ubuntu's 20.04 runs kernel 5.4. I'm on 5.7 with Debian 10's backports :) Although if you enable backports in Ubuntu, they likely have 5.7 as well.

@@Doriandotslash Ubuntu has given me a lot of headache in the past. Debian feels like a polar opposite in a good way.

@@douglasward718 with all due respect, Debian repositories are far better than ppa. 🙏

@@douglasward718 sorry, my brain was out for a stroll when I wrote that. My bad. 👍

Good tip thanks!

That’s great to hear that you’re trying out Debian. It’s a great distro, and one of the originals.

Thanks Colin!

Not at all. AUR is a user repository. Backports are simply a different branch where the testing branch packages are recompiled on the stable branch. This way if you're using Debian Stable, you can use the newer packages if you choose to. These packages are still made by the same developers and maintainers.

@@Doriandotslash it would be nice to have one though at least with that the arch fanboys can shut up for once I like arch but, sometimes the community man

@@AcidiFy574 The community can indeed be harsh. Some of it is because they spend a lot of time writing documentation and WiKi entries to help people. So people come and ask for help before reading the documentation. As for the equivalent in Debian, they have PPA's for that. Individual repos where you can pull someone's software that they wrote which isn't in the official repos.

@@Doriandotslash ah o.k.

Correct. It will only install from backports if you tell it to.

Here you go : getwallpapers.com/wallpaper/full/a/f/5/26140.jpg

You're the man 💯!

You can just use any Live ISO on a USB for this couldn't you? If you want something to save on, some distros support persistence on Live USB sticks.

No but I have done that before. However, for this install I used the Gnome Live ISO and installed from there using the Calamares installer.

@@Doriandotslash is the gnome iso still in testing or has it officially been released? How is it working out for you? Pretty stable?

That's something you might want to test out yourself by dualbooting first. Nvidia driver versions have always annoyed me with how one version works then breaks with the next. Not long ago I actually switched my systems over to AMD so I don't have to deal with drivers anymore.

@@Doriandotslash yea i would also prefer amd over nvidia but it is hard to get anythin from amd especially when it comes to notebooks i need a new for half a year now so i guess i have to go with one comin with a nvidia chipset - again

Yes you can. Disks and partitions can be accessed directly with root permissions. Everything in Linux is a file, including disks and partitions!

This is unlikely to go well in the long run. Mixing Debian and Ubuntu is not a good idea. Ubuntu deviates far from Debian for every release. Your mileage may vary. Unless you are comfortable fixing broken packages and resolving circular dependencies do not go this route. Dorian makes it clear, that this is his way, to get away from the headache of a rolling distribution. That being said, I have been using Debian Sid since 1998. This is the unstable Debian release that means this is very like a rolling distribution. The only real issue for me is the clusterf*** that is the nvidia driver. When that breaks, and it will, (Sid is a rolling distribution after-all.) I have found that snapshot.debian.org/ is invaluable in getting my system back up. Snapshot holds every build of every Debian binary from as far back as 2005, including backports

@@brantregare so how different are Ubuntu and Debian

@@diegomarquez3293 I have only used already installed versions of Ubuntu, never installed and/or maintained one. However I have tried to use/maintain Ubuntu packages on my Debian machines. That has never been a pleasant experience. Often (80%) of the time, I have had to install Ubuntu versions of libraries, instead of the ones already in Debian repositories. They simply are not in sync. So you need to follow Debian and Ubuntu releases, and cherry pick for the packages that you have cross installed. hold package X, manually download and upgrade Y and, subsequently hold it. That is not seamless and a lot of work. I use enlightenment as my window manager, (note: not a desktop environment,) and only install the GTK and KDE components as needed for the applications that I use. I cannot comment on Gnome2/Gnome3/KDE/Plasma/Cinnamon/MATE desktop environments, I do not use them. That said the pain of cherry picking which Ubuntu binary to install on my Debian boxen has not been worth it for me. My advice is, if you use Debian do not mix with Ubuntu, unless, you know what you are doing and, have the time to do it. From the perspective of an Ubuntu user using Debian packages from Debian repositories, I can only speculate... Maybe I jumped the gun with my unlikely to go well comment. If you have time and, are willing to put in the effort, maybe it will work. So to answer your original question, "Can I use Debian back ports on Ubuntu since it is a derivative of Debian?" Very likely yes. Will this be easy to maintain? Very likely no. Dorian chose to try Debian for a reason. No hassle and, seamless updates to newer software with backports.

That is Gnome

@@Doriandotslash so you install ? if yes.. do you change SATA mode from RAPID to AHCI

As long as PureOS supports kernel 5.9 it should be fine. If you have issues, you could always select the old kernel in GRUB and then remove the new wireguard and kernel 5.9.

Bruno Rasera depends on how you look at it. Both are great. Flatpaks are well tested and work on any distro but can have limitations you may have to tweak, like accessing external drives or printing. Flatpaks are also sandboxed which is pretty safe. Backports are also well tested but Debian doesn’t consider them “stable”. You can’t go wrong either way, but I would try backports first.

@@Doriandotslash Cool, ty :)

Thanks! 👍