[ubuntu-uk] Broken Synaptic

[Paul Tansom]

** Andrew Oakley <andrew at aoakley.com> [2008-02-18 13:33]:
> Paul Tansom wrote:
> > Does anyone have any ideas why Synaptic and add/remove programs would
> > both be insisting on using a proxy that is no longer configured?
> 
> Is there a proxy set in gconf? Eg. gconf-editor - system - http_proxy or 
> elsewhere?
** end quote [Andrew Oakley]

Aha, that's the one. I clearly had my grep parameters wrongly set when I
grep'd /etc /home/paul and /root for any instance of my proxy. I missed
search .directories! I'd probably have gone in and hacked one of the
files manually though, so perhaps better to have been pointed at
gconf-editor :) I gave up on Gnome back in 2000/1 iirc, and KDE back in
1996! So far I've not seen a compelling reason to go back to either yet.
They get in the way an bloat the system for no real gain. Still better
than Windows though, that gets in the way and bloats the system for tons
of pain ;) I run XFCE, so don't get some of the Gnome configuration
options on the menu, even though it still interferes with operations
sometimes. I've still not worked out why sometimes when I start the
computer Evolution starts up, and sometimes when I close down it appears
too - I use ssh/mutt for my email, with occaisional dips into
Thunderbird with IMAP and have never used or configured Evolution.

Sadly this sort of consistency and having identical configuration
information in multiple places, and not always easy to find, is where
Linux falls down. Windows isn't immune to it, and there are times where
it is useful to configure differently for a different application
(actually even in Windows there is proxy information all over the place
too!). That said, I was at a LUG meet some time ago where the concept of
using Synaptic to search for a piece of software to install instead of
Google proved confusing for one user, as did getting the right search
term to find what was required. Computers aren't easy things to use,
even though for some things people have got used to them!

I suspect that with this machine I may have to do a reinstall with
XUbuntu to clear the Gnome crud out, although I'm nowhere near 100%
happy with the choices of applications there either - maybe using the
Server or Alternate CD and installing more along the lines of a Debian
install would suite me better!

-- 
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/ | 023 9238 0001
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