hi mehul, you are right on that but the next problem I mentioned is really confusing. look, I used an older aptoncd created disk on a new machine and it did work. now when I had another new machine and I used this latest one (which also includes old packages ) the apt-get install returns "broken package " message for tools like inkscape brasero etc. even sudo apt-get upgrade does not completely upgrade my machine. it gives messages like "the following packages have been kept back " and then gives me a list of packages including generic kernel etc. what could be the problem? I remember apt on cd excluding some deb packages may be because they were older versions of the same libraries or may be they are depricated. could that be the problem? regards, Krishnakant.