about installing packages

[Derek Broughton]

Brian Walker wrote:

> On 7/29/05, Pushparaj Shetty <prajshetty at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> dear sir/ madam,
>> I am user of ubuntu 5.04. I need to work with packages like latex and
>> xfig and xdvi.
>> Kindly provide me the instructions to download these packages.
>> 
> As an experienced user you will, of course, have tried synaptic?
> 
Ack!  Why?  I've tried asking a number of people about this, but _why_
synaptic?  What does it provide that I would find I couldn't live without? 
I realize this is a predominantly Gnome-user list, so maybe you don't have
other GUI options, but for the full GUI KPackage seems much more useful and
for anything else it's aptitude.  When I first tried synaptic, it had the
virtue of being really fast.  Then they added more features until it got to
be as slow as kpackage. :-(
-- 
derek