On Tue, 31 Mar 2020 02:43:51 +0800 kaye n <guik...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 2:27 AM Joe <j...@jretrading.com> wrote: > > > > > Be careful. Virtualbox pretty much needs the client extensions, and > > I once upgraded a Virtualbox past the point where the extensions > > worked with the Debian Stable kernel. > > > > -- > > Joe > > > > I'm sorry Joe, I have no idea what you just said. I only know the > basics of GNU/Linux. > The reason I went with that tecmint.com's method is because if I > download directly from virtualbox's website ( which I think is a deb > file?) and I execute the dpkg -i command, I get dependency issues. > But the virtualbox seems to have installed despite the dependency > issues. I did not try to use that virtualbox and instead I removed > it from my system and tried tecmint.com's method, which installed an > older version. >
Yes, that's basically it. I had upgraded to a version of Virtualbox which installed OK but the client extensions to that version of Virtualbox required a kernel version higher than the Debian Stable one. The client extensions allow more communication with Virtualbox than the most basic that come with Virtualbox itself, they are pretty much essential. Stable hardly changes at all during its lifetime, and only security updates are available to its most recent kernel, and the same is true of most other packages. So with time, Stable becomes less and less able to accept new software that isn't in its repositories, because of dependency problems. As you have found. By all means, install what looks good, but be prepared to remove it and use an earlier version if dependencies are too much of a problem. The alternative is to move to Debian Testing or Unstable, but you need to be prepared to fix things when they break. I use Stable on my server, because I want it to be, and Unstable on my desktop, and I have a netbook so I can continue to work if something is broken on the desktop. That is actually fairly rare, and is normally fixable by returning to a previous version of the offending package, and not upgrading it until a better version is produced. Always the choice: new but buggy, or less buggy but older. -- Joe
