Re: Why not dselect?
"Noah L. Meyerhans" 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:-)
>
> And vi was intuitive and easy the first time you used it? For that
it still is not:-) I just wanted to point out that I learned vi but
not dselect. take it for what it's worth (not much:-)
> matter, was the UI of an automobile immediately intuitive? I won't
> claim that the dselect UI is wonderful, but I really don't think it's as
> bad as you claim. It's at least consistant with itself, which is
> something that many common user interfaces lack. My only complaint
> about the UI is (as was already mentioned) the inability to collapse
> package lists. That would be wonderful.
I am not complaining that it is not intuitive. nothing is (almost). I
just wasn't able to figure out what's going on and how to fix the
problems and even what the screens mean and how to get from one to
another (I don't remember exactly, I would have to start dselect again
to make more qualified complain, but for obvious reasons I am trying to
avoid that:-) even after reading online help (and manpage? I am not sure
if I had manpage available at that point of installation)... I have hard
time to admit that I am just dense so I am blaming the program:-)
> > I've been using aptitude lately. I also like the X programs (there are
> > some gnome and kde ones) for browsing the installed packages,
> > unfortunately they seem to be quite unstable (crashes, some parts are
> > obviously not finished etc.).
>
> I checked out aptitude (or was it capt?) and didn't see anything nice
> about it that dselect hasn't been doing for years. Other than
> alternative interfaces, do any of the other dpkg/apt front ends offer
> real feature improvements?
I don't know, probably not, the dselect seems to be fairly feature
complete. however I think that considering the number of packages the
presentation is very important feature in itself. It's not the
functionality of dselect that people (including myself) are complaining
about.
> > generally, I find packages using debian.org (or get name elsewhere,
> > like this mailing list) and install them using apt-get install
> > packagename.
>
> As do I, for the most part, but even then there are times when dselect
> is helpful. For example, apt doesn't handle package recommendations at
> all, so apt-get install vim won't even mention the extremely useful
> vim-rt. dselect does.
that's one major for for dselect... specially in case of vim and
vim-rt, because vim is severely impaired without vim-rt. there might be
other examples that I do not know about since I do not use dselect:-)
> > apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
> >
>
> Sure, but then you're never told about newly available packages, only
> about updated version of stuff you've already got.
hmmm... not sure about this one, why would I care? I generally search
for packages because I want some functionality, not because the package
is new. seems like nice feature but I don't see it as an important one
(but that's just me).
again, IMO the meaningful presentation of packages is crucial (for me)
and that's the area where dselect fails big time, add to that awkward
control of dselect and there you have it: the bad reputation you mention
below.
> Anyway, I'm by no means bashing apt at all. I am just trying to defend
> dselect a bit. I don't think it deserves the bad reputation it's been
> given.
ok, I am not going to use it though:-)
erik
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