synaptic on 17.10

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 25 January 2018 15:01:25 Peter Flynn wrote:

> On 25/01/18 05:58, Bret Busby wrote:
> > On 25/01/2018, Peter Hillier-Brook <phb at hbsys.plus.com> wrote:
> >> I've just upgraded a friend's machine to Ubuntu 17:10 and joined a
> >> long list of people who've discovered that synaptic wont start.
> >
> > Does this mean that 18.04 will automatically be permanently broken
> > from the release date?
>
> I find it interesting from the UI point of view that with all the
> other attempts to provide an interface for the installation and
> removal of packages, Synaptic still retains a strong following.
>
Thats because its a well trained child, does what you tell it to do, and 
doesn't often rock the boat.

The spoiled brat named aptitude has destroyed a working system for the 
3rd and last time here. So now its shot on sight. With rm if needed to 
get rid of it.

> I only use it to browse what's available, and that's not often; I'm
> perfectly happy using apt for day-to-day updates and installation.

Thats fine. IF you know the package name.  For that, there is synaptic.

> Perhaps there is a lesson in there for the designers and authors of
> other interfaces to package management, as to what users actually want
> to see on the screen; and at the two extremes, how much ancillary
> bloat or how much bare-bones leanness they are prepared to put up
> with.

My only complaint about synaptic is that since jessie, you can only run 
it on its own screen, from its own keyboard. Doing that on a pi is 
painfull, due to the lack of near white color depth on the pi, half the 
data that tells you a pulldown is open isn't there, and that has led to 
clicking on the wrong stuff. Also the scroll bar on the right is only 
one pixel wide, and while it is possible to grab the slider, if it moves 
off that vertical pixel as you attempt to pull it down, it disengages 
from the slider and you start all over again. So its not all that user 
friendly on a pi running jessie.

Most of my stuff here is machine control and with the kernels pinned to a 
realtime build, wheezy is running all but one machine, and I can ssh -Y 
into any other wheezy and run synaptic-pkexec from the shell. From a 
nice comfortable chair. Is there some way I can restore that?

> ///Peter


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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