Ubuntu Packages

[Michael M.]

On Sat, 2006-03-25 at 21:59 -0500, Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:

> 
> I'm sorry to disagree. But I would have said "Synaptic" can be tricky as
> it's a gui application... And then recommended the command line version
> "apt-get".
> 
> Different strokes for different folks and all that, but as long as I can
> make sense of "man Command-Name" (which I'll admit isn't always) I
> usually find the command line tools much more predictable and hence LESS
> tricky than their gui counterparts. Plus if I don't get the results I
> expect, it's much easier to ask for help by posting the exact command
> line I tried than by trying to describe each and every click I took with
> a gui application.

I thought apt-get and related was more or less on its way out in favor
of aptitude, which is reputedly more robust.  That's the impression I've
gotten from various Debian sources, anyway.  Of course, I doubt apt
would go away completely -- after all, dpkg is still around!

Personally, I prefer aptitude to the other options I've tried because it
offers the same command-line power of apt with the additional benefit of
a curses interface when the latter is useful, which often it is.  If I
just want to install, remove, show or search for a package, aptitude on
the command line is fine.  The curses interface is better, I think, for
investigating 'recommends' and 'depends' and general hunting and poking
around.  The pseudo-tabbed interface makes it easier not to get lost,
and the package categorization makes it easier to look for things when
you don't necessarily know exactly what you want.  Like if I just want
to browse through the Gnome-specific packages looking for some neat
little app I don't know about, it's easy to do with aptitude's curses
interface.  And aptitude's broken-package resolver is pretty slick, too.

To each his own, of course!

-- 
Michael M. -- Portland, OR -- USA 
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to
dream." -S. Jackson