Re: Greetings and a minor rave!!
* Douglas Tutty <dtutty@porchlight.ca> [2006 Dec 14 06:07 -0600]:
> Package management is the cornerstone to Debian. The individual
> packages are installed by dpkg but how they're selected, managed, and
> have their dependancies resolved is the job of a package manager (that
> then run dpkg on each package in the right order). There's lots to
> learn here. Unless you go totally manual and just use dpkg you will
> probably use apt to fetch packages so you should read the apt HOWTO and
> the apt user's guide. Then if you use a front-end to apt (aptitude, or
> others) you should read the aptitude user's manual.
I read a good paper last week on Debian. It posited that everyone
assumes that package management is the cornerstone of Debian, but it is
really the policy behind the packaging system that keeps the system
cohesive and allows it to work at all. It further explained that other
distributions copy or use apt, but miss on the policy aspect and soon
fall apart, especially when upgrading. I've even seen this on some
Debian derivatives.
> I second the motion on mc. When I do an install, I only put in the
> minimalist base system. I make sure I've got aptitude and get it set
> up, then I install mc. It can delve into tarballs, read html (and other
> formats with the right helper aps installed), provide a front-end to ftp
> and sftp, and includes a basic editor. In fact, if I'm on a system too
> small for vim I can do 90% of my daily tasks out of mc on a terminal.
Absolutely! Midnight Commander should be part of the base install.
Among the other cool things mc can do is allow you to "look" into a
.deb archive by hitting <Enter> when the filename is highlighted, then
scrolling down until INSTALL is highlighted and hitting <Enter> again.
It will run dpkg -i on the package. Of course, no dependency
resolution is done, but it's an easy way to install a one-off package.
If you don't want to install the package, you can nagivate the files
the package contains, perhaps browse docs, etc.
It is truly the Swiss Army Chainsaw of system administration.
- Nate >>
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