Re: Why not dselect?
Brian McGroarty wrote:
>
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 10:27:02AM -0800, Erik Steffl wrote:
>
> > IMO it has one of the worst UI I've ever seen. it confused the
> > hell out of me when I was installing debian for the first
> > time. that's from the vi enthusiast:-)
>
> I'll admit it confused the hell out of me at first, then again, so did
> regular expressions/emacs/bind/anything else worth learning.
>
> Walking through an upgrade to see what packages are affected, testing
> complex dependency arrangements and then being able to hit 'R' to put
> everything back is sweet. If you can do that /quickly/ in a shell
> environment, I'd like to see how...
well, I usually blindly update everything (update && dist-upgrade).
sometime I use aptitude which lists the upgraded packages and I only
needed to learn ugg (u to update, g to show which packeges are held
back/installed/removed/upgraded, second g to really do it), enter on
packages shows the status/description/recommends/conflicts etc...
the truth is I've never encountered (or noticed) complex dependency
situations... only while using dselect during system install, and the
complexity was mostly caused by me not understanding what's going on
(and confusing dselect UI, I like to think that it wasn't entirely my
fault:-)
as I see it the important difference is that I understand why the
regexp/vi/... are the way they are and it was quite clear from the
beginning, they have certain internal consistency and elegance. or in
other words, I don't think I could significantly improve them (they can
be improved in vim way but the general way they work stays the same over
time). However, the dselect seems to be just confusing, not consistent
and easily improvable (from UI viewpoint).
> > generally, I find packages using debian.org (or get name
> > elsewhere, like this mailing list) and install them using
> > apt-get install packagename.
>
> You know about "apt-cache search", right?
yes, but not sure if I trust it:-) I had some bad experiences trying
to get info on packages from my own HD (that's because I used wrong
tools but the feeleing stays:-), so I usually look them up on web... the
truth is I never bothered to check the docs on it so it's easier for me
to use menus on web page (and I also browse package lists which I'm not
sure how to do using apt* tools)
> > to update system (few times a day:-)
> >
> > apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
>
> A few times a day? Now THAT'S just obsessive :)
well, most of the time just once... some say that's obsessive
already... I guess I am just amazed how it works (and that it works).
someone should write some more interesting visualization than 83% 4h23m
left :-)) [I know, I know, I am welcome to do it:-)]
erik
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