For most users of Debian and Ubuntu there are mirrors of the package repositories for the entire distributions available right on campus. This gives extremely fast downloads (10MiB/s!!!) for any updates to your existing software if you are on campus, as well as new applications which you may choose to download. This helps bandwidth consumption for Hampshire and indeed the Internet as a whole. It makes much more sense to download it to campus once, and then distribute it to multiple people on campus from a local mirror!

The process for enabling your computer to use these mirrors is fairly simple. You need to alter a text file on your system located at /etc/apt/sources.list by typing this command in your terminal:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

A graphical text editor will come up, and the line corresponding to your version of Debian should be copied and pasted into the top of the file.

Debian

Etch (stable)

deb http://mirror.hampshire.edu/debian/ stable main contrib non-free
deb http://mirror.hampshire.edu/debian-security/ stable/updates main contrib non-free

Lenny (testing)

deb http://mirror.hampshire.edu/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb http://mirror.hampshire.edu/debian-security/ testing/updates main contrib non-free

Sid (unstable)

deb http://mirror.hampshire.edu/debian/ sid main contrib non-free

Ubuntu

For Ubuntu it is very similar. Run the same command on the terminal to open the sources.list configuration file in a text editor, and delete everything in the text file already, replace it with the following lines:

deb http://mirror.hampshire.edu/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted multiverse universe
deb http://mirror.hampshire.edu/ubuntu/ gutsy-security main restricted multiverse universe
deb http://mirror.hampshire.edu/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates main restricted multiverse universe
deb http://mirror.hampshire.edu/ubuntu/ gutsy-proposed main restricted multiverse universe
deb http://mirror.hampshire.edu/ubuntu/ gutsy-backports main restricted multiverse universe


Now save the file, close the text editor, run the Synaptic Package Manager and click the "Reload" button, and your computer will download the package lists from the new repository at Hampshire!

If you would like to explore the construction of a Debian and/or Ubuntu mirror, or even check out Hampshire's very own mirror of the Linux kernel archive, head on over to:

http://mirror.hampshire.edu/