about installing packages

[Derek Broughton]

Al Gordon wrote:

> On 8/2/05, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>> Brian Walker wrote:
>> 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. :-(

Interestingly, I got two responses, neither of which dealt with the question
- why do people seem to love synaptic?

> While all of the GUI-based solutions have their own strengths and
> weaknesses, I still prefer to use the command line for installing
> apps.
> 
> 1. Search for a package using apt-cache search <name>
> 2. Find the correct package from the list.
> 3. Install using sudo apt-get install <package>

Man, that's doing it the hard way :-)
 
> example:
> apt-cache search xfig
> sudo apt-get install xfig

Or better:

aptitude search xfig
sudo aptitude install xfig

aptitude eliminates a lot of clutter - taking over the functions of both
apt-get and apt-cache, and using the same syntax to purge a package as to
remove it (I always hated "apt-get --purge remove ...").
 
> The apt system will make sure that any supporting programs, libraries,
> etc. are installed, and will prompt you with any questions, or if
> there are conflicts.
> 
> If you need further info about any of the packages listed from doing
> step 1, above, use "apt-cache show" (example: apt-cache show xfig).
 
aptitude show xfig :-)
-- 
derek