Re: To dselect or aptitude, that is the question
From: Michael D Schleif (mds_at_helices.org)
Date: 04/21/04
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Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 09:40:14 -0500 To: Debian-User <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
* Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> [2004:04:20:22:27:12-0400] scribed:
> J.S.Sahambi wrote:
> > I have been using apt and dselect for some time. Can any body tell me
> > about the advantages/disadvantages of dselect and aptitude? and which is
> > better?
>
> Nine reasons why you should be using aptitude instead of apt-get or dselect.
>
> 1. aptitude can look just like apt-get
>
> If you run 'aptitude update' or 'aptitude upgrade' or 'aptitude
> install', it looks and works just like apt-get, with a few enhancements.
> So there is no learning curve.
>
> (If you're a dselect user, learning curve is obviously not one of your
> problems.)
>
> 2. aptitude tracks automatically installed packages
>
> Stop worrying about pruning unused libraries and support packages from
> your system. If you use aptitude to install everything, it will keep
> track of what packages are pulled in by dependencies alone, and remove
> those packages when they are no longer needed.
>
> 3. aptitude sanely handles recommends
>
> A long-standing failure of apt-get has been its lack of support for
> the Recommends relationship. Which is a problem because many packages
> in Debian rely on Recommends to pull in software that the average user
> generally uses with the package. This is a not uncommon cause of
> trouble, even though apt-get recently became able to at least mention
> recommended packages, it's easy to miss its warnings.
>
> Aptitude supports Recommends by default, and can be confgigured to
> support Suggests too. It even supports installing recommended packages
> when used in command-line mode.
>
> 4. use aptitude as a normal user and avoid hosing your system
>
> Maybe you didn't know that you can run aptitude in gui mode as a regular
> user. Make any changes you'd like to try out. If you get into a real
> mess, you can hit 'q' and exit, your changes will not be saved.
> (Aptitude also lets you use ctrl-u to undo changes.) Since it's running
> as a normal user, you cannot hose your system until you tell aptitude to
> do something, at which point it will prompt you for your root password.
>
> 5. aptitude has a powerful UI and searching capabilities
>
> Between aptitude's categorical browser and its great support for
> mutt-style filtering and searching of packages by name, description,
> maintainer, dependencies, etc, you should be able to find packages
> faster than ever before using aptitude.
>
> 6. aptitude makes it easy to keep track of obsolete software
>
> If Debian stops distributing a package, apt will leave it on your system
> indefinitly, with no warnings, and no upgrades. Aptitude lists such
> packages in its "Obsolete and Locally Created Packages" section, so you
> can be informed of the problem and do something about it.
>
> 7. aptitude has an interface to the Debian task system
>
> Aptitude lets you use Debian's task system as it was designed to be
> used. You can browse the available tasks, select a task for install, and
> then dig into it and de-select parts of the task that you don't want.
> apt-get has no support for tasks, and aptitude is better even than
> special purpose tools like tasksel.
>
> 8. aptitude supports multiple sources
>
> If your sources.list is configured to make multiple versions of a
> package available, aptitude lets you drill down to see the available
> versions and pick a non-default version to install. If a package breaks
> in unstable, just roll it back to the version in testing.
>
> 9. aptitude logs its actions
>
> Aptitude logs package it installs, upgrades, and removes to
> /varlog/aptitude, which can be useful to work out why things started
> breaking after yesterday's upgrade, or when you removed a partiticlar
> package.
>
> --
> see shy jo
I would have been using aptitude long ago, _except_ for this hurdle on
my systems:
# sudo aptitude -P upgrade
Password:
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree
Reading extended state information... Done
The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED:
antiword debiandoc-sgml debiandoc-sgml-doc debsums dhelp djbdns-doc
djtools doc-html-w3 docbook docbook-defguide docbook-doc docbook-dsssl
docbook-dsssl-doc docbook-mathml docbook-xsl emacs20-el esound foo2zjs
foomatic-db foomatic-db-engine foomatic-db-gimp-print foomatic-db-hpijs
foomatic-filters foomatic-gui fortune-mod fortunes-min freefont
freetype1-tools fttools gimp gimp-perl gimpprint-doc gimpprint-locales
gnome-doc-tools gnome-vfs-extras2 hpijs html2ps ijsgimpprint imlib-progs
irb jade jadetex karbon kchart kformula kivio koffice koshell kpresenter
kspread kugar kword libdv-bin libdv2 libgimp1.2 libgtkxmhtml1
libjcode-pm-perl libmpeg1 libpng10-dev libpng2-dev libreadline-ruby
librecode0 libroman-perl libsgmls-perl libsp1 libterm-readkey-perl
libtext-format-perl libtiff-tools linuxdoc-tools linuxdoc-tools-info
linuxdoc-tools-latex linuxdoc-tools-text man2html manpages-dev netcat
netpbm-nonfree opensp pchar pdl perlmagick perlsgml pgperl pgplot5 psgml
python-glade2 python-gnome2 python-optik python-xml python2.2-glade2
python2.2-gnome2 python2.2-gtk2 python2.2-optik python2.2-pyorbit
python2.2-xml python2.2-xmlbase recode reportbug ruby-examples
sgml-base-doc sgmls-doc sgmlspl sp spell swish++ t1utils transfig
ttf-arphic-bkai00mp ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp
ttf-arphic-gkai00mp ttf-xtt-wadalab-gothic ttf-xtt-watanabe-mincho
ttmkfdir type1inst w3-dtd-mathml w3-recs w3-recs-2002 w3-recs-2003
w3c-dtd-xhtml xfig xfig-doc xpdf-utils xscreensaver-gnome
The following packages have been kept back:
bastille x-window-system-core
The following packages will be upgraded:
arts dictionaries-common fontconfig gnome-vlc kernel-package libarts1
libartsc0 libdevmapper1.00 libfontconfig1 libfontconfig1-dev
libhtml-parser-perl libxml2 libxslt1.1 links mozilla-plugin-vlc ntp
ntp-doc ntp-server ntp-simple ntpdate proftpd proftpd-common
python2.3-gnome2 scsitools ssh synaptic ucf vlc vlc-plugin-esd xmms
30 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 123 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 14.5MB of archives. After unpacking 342MB will be freed.
*HOW* should I get around *ALL* of those REMOVED's ???
-- Best Regards, mds mds resource 877.596.8237 - Dare to fix things before they break . . . - Our capacity for understanding is inversely proportional to how much we think we know. The more I know, the more I know I don't know . . . --
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- Previous message: Brad Cramer: "RE: X crashing with new Geforce FX5700 card"
- In reply to: Joey Hess: "Re: To dselect or aptitude, that is the question"
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- Reply: Joey Hess: "Re: To dselect or aptitude, that is the question"
- Reply: Monique Y. Mudama: "Re: To dselect or aptitude, that is the question"
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