linux newbie

[David]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2005 at 10:44:10PM +0200, Praveen Kumar wrote:
> hi,
> 
> thanks everybody for helping me out with installing the *.deb packages
> (remember the stupid question)... i have learnt both to install suing
> the terminal (dpkg) as well as the synaptic package manager... though
> synaptic is nice, it is still better to stumble around finding my way
> as i think it is a better way to learn the ropes of linux.
> 
> once again thanks everybody.
> praveen kumar

It's a great idea to learn the ropes, as you say, but you really should 
use the apt package manager. One of the seriously great advantanges of 
Debian/Ubuntu over ANY other distro or OS is the apt system

Synaptic
Aptitude
apt-get  
  etc,etc

It's the primary reason that a lot of us get into using Debian based 
systems. It's clean, it's easy and it just works. So far I haven't found a 
down-side to using it.

If you want to "learn the ropes", you can poke around in the apt package 
management system using simple tools like dpkg or apt-cache. If you want 
to get really serious, go visit the Debian web site and read to your 
hearts content. But you should still install programs and packages using 
Synaptic or apt-get (basically the same thing).

I haven't found the need to use dpkg -i for years. Debian's apt package 
management (including the Synaptic front end) is one system that really 
works as advertised.

PS: your question wasn't stupid ;-)