Re: aptitude Re: opacity of Ubuntu

On 11/16/2008 11:19 PM, John Hasler wrote:
Balwinder S Dheeman writes:
But you still can't entirely remove and, or get rid of apt-get front
end...

Yes you can (but there is no reason you would want to and you wouldn't like
the result). The apt-get program is part of the apt package which is Priority: important and can be removed, though the system will try to talk
you out of it.

...or let me say that aptitude and, or synaptic is not a true replacement
or alternative to apt-get...

Yes it is. Unlike the MTAs you mention they do not conflict so you can
have all three at once.

...so why use aptitude or synaptic as a front?

Those are front-ends to apt, not to apt-get, and they present very
different user interfaces which some people prefer. You are free to use
apt-get or even dselect or dpkg directly if you prefer. The presence of
one front-end does not preclude the use of another, or none at all.

Well, I have been using dpkg, dselect, apt-get since long and needed to use/teach synaptic for/to a few customers at remote locations. I wanted and have switched over to aptitude since I learned that it is good alternative to apt-get. But when on seeing aptitude has become a mainstream/stable package and being shipped with almost flavors of Debian or Debian like distros, I tried to remove/purge apt:

ii apt 0.7.16+b1 Advanced front-end for dpkg

Which provides *apt-get*, I was slapped with a WARNING that if you remove 'apt' your system will/can become instable.

I think, neither the synaptic nor aptitudue is a true alternative to apt/apt-get. So I removed both the synaptic and aptitude and reverted back to using apt/apt-get itself, because I don't want to keep and, or maintain a pile of such packages which have nothing to do with the routine functioning of my systems.

--
Dr Balwinder S "bsd" Dheeman Registered Linux User: #229709
Anu'z Linux@HOME (Unix Shoppe) Machines: #168573, 170593, 259192
Chandigarh, UT, 160062, India Gentoo, Fedora, Debian/FreeBSD/XP
Home: http://cto.homelinux.net/~bsd/ Visit: http://counter.li.org/
.

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