How-To: Compile and Install GIMP 2.6.6 in Debian Lenny

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the most popular and powerful image editor on the Linux platform. It benefits from detailed official documentation, as well as a huge number of community-made tutorials and dedicated websites.

The latest stable series, 2.6.x, include several UI improvements, new filters, and the introduction of the GEGL (Generic Graphics Library) framework.

Although the version which comes with Debian Lenny (2.4.7) is stable enough and full-featured, if you want the latest release you can easily compile your own version by following the steps below.

1. Install build-essential and the development libraries

apt-get install build-essential

Next, make sure the sources repositories are enabled (there should be a line which starts with deb-src in /etc/apt/sources.list), for example:

deb-src ftp://ftp.ro.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free

Update the package lists:

apt-get update

Install the development libraries:

apt-get build-dep gimp

Install additional dependencies:

apt-get install libgegl-0.0-dev

3. Download the source code
Download the GIMP 2.6.6 source tarball from here, then uncompress it:

tar -xjf gimp-2.6.6.tar.bz2

4. Compile and install GIMP 2.6.6
To compile and install GIMP, just issue the usual commands inside the gimp-2.6.6 directory:

./configure
make
make install

The last one as root. You can also install as normal user using the --prefix parameter, e.g.:

./configure --prefix=/home/USER/usr

How-To: Compile and Install Banshee 1.4.3 in Debian Lenny

Banshee is a popular audio player written using the GTK toolkit. Currently at version 1.4.3, Banshee is a good alternative to players like Rhythmbox or Exaile for GNOME or Amarok for KDE.

This release comes with improved MTP (media transfer protocol) support and several bug fixes.

Here are several easy to follow steps for compiling Banshee on Debian Lenny (since Debian comes with Banshee 1.0):

Notice that iPod support will not be available!


1. Install the tools needed for compilation
Type in a terminal as root:

apt-get install build-essential

2. Install the dependencies
Make sure the sources repositories are enabled in the /etc/apt/sources.list file (you should have a line which starts with deb-src, like deb-src ftp://ftp.ro.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free) and then issue the following commands as root:

apt-get update
apt-get build-dep banshee

3. Download the source tarball
Download the tarball from the official website, here (direct link), then uncompress it:

tar -xjf banshee-1-1.4.3.tar.bz2

4. Compile and install Banshee
Issue the following commands inside the banshee-1-1.4.3 directory:

./configure --disable-ipod
make
make install

The last one as root.

Although I tried to install Banshee as normal user too (using ./configure --prefix), I've got an error when it was still trying to write to /usr so I'm not sure whether it can be installed as normal user this way.

You can run Banshee by pressing ALT+F2 and typing banshee-1 in the Run dialogue that appears.

To uninstall it, just issue the command make uninstall as root from inside the banshee-1-1.4.3 directory.

How-To: Compile and Install VLC 0.9.8 from Source in Debian Lenny

VLC (VideoLAN Client) is one of the most popular video players on Linux, together with players like SMPlayer or Kaffeine. It plays many audio and video formats (including Xvid, DivX, H.264, Theora, WMV, Real Video, Ogg, MP3, FLAC, APE, AC3, WAV) together with DVDs and DVD ISO images.

The version which comes included in the Debian Lenny repositories is 0.8.6h, which uses the wxWidgets kit and it is kind of outdated now. The latest release of VLC is 0.9.8a, which is now built in Qt 4 and includes several improvements over the 0.8.x series.

VLC 0.9.8a running in Debian Lenny

To compile this release from source you can follow the steps below:

1. Install the tools needed for compilation
As root, type:

apt-get install build-essential

build-essential is a meta package which includes tools like gcc or make, needed to compile source code.

2. Install the dependencies
The following command will install the development libraries which are needed for the compilation:

apt-get install libqt4-dev libpostproc-dev libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libavutil-dev libmad0-dev liba52-0.7.4-dev libhal-dev libdbus-1-dev libfribidi-dev libgcrypt11-dev

3. Fetch the source tarball
Download the VLC 0.9.8a source tarball from here, then uncompress it:

tar -xjf vlc-0.9.8a.tar.bz2

4. Compile and install VLC
To compile VLC, just change the working directory to vlc-0.9.8a and issue the following commands:

./configure --disable-swscale
make
make install

The last one as root.

Configuration

You can also install VLC as normal user by specifying a prefix, i.e.:

./configure --prefix=/home/USER/usr/ --disable-swscale

In this case you can issue make install as normal user. Also make sure to include /home/USER/usr/bin in your $PATH.

How-To: Install the Latest Wine Release in Debian Lenny

Debian Lenny comes with Wine 1.0.1 included in the repositories, which is the stable release of Wine, but it is also a little outdated. Here are a few easy steps for compiling and installing the latest Wine release from source in Debian Lenny. This tutorial should work for the latest Wine release (at the time of writing, the last release is 1.1.17).


1. Install the tools needed for the compilation
Type in a terminal as root:

apt-get install build-essential

2. Install the development libraries needed by Wine
To install the necessary dependencies, first make sure that you have the sources repositories enabled in your /etc/apt/sources.list file. To do this, you should have a line which starts with deb-src, e.g.:

deb-src ftp://ftp.ro.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free

Next, update the packages list:

apt-get update

And then install the dependencies:

apt-get build-dep wine

This will take a while, depending on the speed of your Internet connection.

3. Download the source tarball
Get the source tarball for the latest release from the official website, then uncompress it. For example, for Wine 1.1.17 you would issue the following command in the directory where you saved it:

tar -xjf wine-1.1.17.tar.bz2

Next, change the current working directory to wine-1.1.17 and proceed to the next step.

4. Compile and install Wine
You can either do:

./configure
make depend && make
make install

The last one as root. Or you can use their script located in the tools/ directory, wineinstall:

./tools/wineinstall
make install

If you want to install Wine as normal user change the prefix to, say, /home/USER/usr:

./configure --prefix=/home/USER/usr
make depend && make
make install

And make sure to include /home/USER/usr/bin in your $PATH.

Next configure Wine by typing winecfg as normal user and run Windows applications like this:

wine application_name.exe

Make sure to keep the directory wine-1.1.17, so in case you need to uninstall Wine, you will only have to issue the following command from inside that directory:

make uninstall


Alternate way to install Wine: using the WineHQ repository
To set up Wine from the WineHQ repository you will need to follow this simple tutorial, provided on the Wine homepage. To sum it up:

Remove your existing Wine installation as root:

apt-get remove wine

Add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://www.lamaresh.net/apt lenny main

Add the GPG key:

wget -O - http://www.lamaresh.net/apt/key.gpg | apt-key add -

Issue the following two commands:

apt-get update && apt-get install wine

This should do it too.

Updated: March 31, 2009