Elevator Pitch
One of the beauty of GNU/Linux is the flexibility to get the sources code of a package and compile it from scratch for your current operating system.
In this talk, we’ll be talking about how we can backport our favorite packages in experimental or staging against our OS architecture and libraries.
Description
In simple terms, Backporting is the process of making new software run on something old. A version of something new that’s been modified to run on something old is called a backport.
As an active daily GNU/Linux User, we have at some point tend to add the bleeding edge repository and other experimental/staging repositories just so that we can have early access to our favorite application. After getting them, we run into issues arising from unstable library dependencies and mess our GNU/Linux instance up and spend hours trying to fix and sort out the issue manually.
One way to avoid these issues and still have access to our favorite packages is to backport the latest release from these experimental or staging repositories against our current operating system libraries, compiling them back and executing them successfully without having to run into any issues.
Notes
Hi, I’m Olakanmi Oluwole.
Active GNU/Linux user for over 5 years.
I’m interested in giving this talk because i’ve noticed that almost everyone who has switched to linux at some point has had the issue of installing packages and end up installing from an experimental or staging repo and end up breaking their instance due to unstable library dependencies.
One good way to install these packages even from experimental or staging without breaking things is by backporting these packages. As interesting as this sounds, backporting is not a popular discussion among GNU/Linux enthusiasts because it might not be beginner friendly and intermediate users might find it easier backing up and reinstalling their operating system rather than going through the learning curve of backporting packages.
This talk is to show and encourage the practice of backporting packages and provide a simple guide on how to start backporting packages.