Discovering Uninstalled Alternatives for /etc/alternatives

[Ric Moore]

On Wed, 2011-08-24 at 10:55 +0100, Smylers wrote:
> Hi there. How do I find out which packages provide an alternative for a
> particular entry in /etc/alternatives?
> 
> For example, I recently spotted that the mutt command uses the
> alternatives mechanism. So I wanted to know which other packages provide
> a mutt command -- maybe one of those would have something interesting in
> that I'd prefer to the Mutt I'm currently using.
> 
> update-alternatives only lists alternatives that I already have
> installed:
> 
>   $ update-alternatives --config mutt
>   There is only one alternative in link group mutt: /usr/bin/mutt-org
>   Nothing to configure.
> 
> What I want is a list of all packages that provide a particular
> alternative, so that I can consider installing them.

I just went through the same thing... in synaptic, search on
alternatives and you'll see two different gui's for alternatives. Works
a charm. It'll show up in your system preferences. I used the KDE one.
Piece O cake to use, as I just "manually" installed java 7 to 10.4. Now
I'm faced with having to install Firefox 4 for java-7 plugin to work. It
never ends. Ric

-- 
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
Linux user# 44256