Re: How to use aptitude
> So, if I have that right, I need to keep a close eye on
> what aptitude offers to uninstall, if I previously used
> 'apt-get install package' extensively?
You always need to have a close eye on packages being additionally uninstalled.
> I can abort, and use aptitude to install/reinstall said
> important packages, and after that aptitude might better
> resolve the original conflict in dependencies?
Possible. You can set the package status explicitly in aptitude. But it's rarely necessary, except perhaps setting packages on 'hold' ( = key), in which case they won't get touched anymore, not even for upgrade. Of course, if you remove a lib they depend on, they remain broken. You will be shown broken things immediately after the first 'g'.
You can configure the dependency handling, when and if aptitude should try to fix situations. Have a look at F10->Options. There's much useful stuff.
You can anytime see the number of actually broken packages in the top bar, and search (/) for them explicitly with ~b. Search has a history (arrow up) btw.
Usually conflicts are shown after 'g' in smart-scenario view, where you can decide about the best solution.
You won't need plain apt-get anymore anyway. If you really like to do, you can always use aptitude as replacement from commandline. Well i don't pretend to have seen any possible case, and usually i try to avoid difficulties instead of solving them ;) all i can say is it's long since i needed apt-get, and most often surely to install aptitude on a base install. (But it's already in there nowadays, IIRR)
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