[plug] busted upgrade

[smclevie]

Poor wee me,

I didst bee sillee.

Yes! I managed to upgrade from stable to 'testing' and now I is busted.

Those involved at the plug workshop might know how to answer this most 
effectively ... :)

OK....  I'm broadly operational (I haven't tested everything yet) in the 
sense that most things seem to work at the command-line level.
I am networked and samba-ing and internetting etc...

I am also able to install X and get a screen of some sorts.
The "GUI" doesn't have a bar at the bottom of screen and only a few icons 
on screen.  (trashbin, home and a Debian link?)
It is fairly useless in this sense.
Mouse is recognized.
Really yukky log-in screen ... (old?)

To say it in a few words,
When I remove the GUI packages (just to try to start from a base of sorts) 
and try installing through tasksel a desktop environment,
I get a rather significant list of packages that are 'not going to be 
installed'.  WHY !!??

I get the same when doing things like "apt-get -u install gnome" for example.

I have "apt-get update" -ed.  I have changed preferences pinning to allow 
packages to go to testing.
I have changed the perl ? command in apt.conf to say default dist to be 
'testing'

What is this "is not going to be installed" thing??
It is all I'm seeing in that I'm getting this message only and not a 
mixture of messages.

Oh, I've tried 'apt-get -f install' too ...

Could I be presented with a list of packages to install and not install as 
a basic start?
Is this a realistic/reasonable question?
Is it because of conflicting packages?

I'm back at the command line now.

Thanks in advance,

Steve.