Installing Essential softwares on Debian Etch

In order to install softwares like acroread and mplayer, include following line into your '/etc/apt/sources.list'

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ etch main


Download the key-ring from this site and install it as follows:

$ sudo dpkg -i debian-multimedia-keyring_2008.10.16_all.deb


and then run "apt-get update". More information regarding this is available here and here.

# sudo apt-get install acroread



For flash, you need to install the package "flashplugin-nonfree" which is available in backports repository. Include following line into your sources.list file:

deb http://www.backports.org/debian etch-backports main contrib non-free

and now get keyrings for backport repository.

#apt-get install debian-backports-keyring
#apt-get update
#apt-get -t etch-backports install flashplugin-nonfree