Re: communicator: contrib vs non-free

[Bob Nielsen <nielsen@oz.net>]

On Tue, Apr 24, 2001 at 12:20:03PM -0700, peanut butter wrote:
> > > What is the difference between Communicator offered through "contrib"
> > > vs. "non-free".  Which naturally leads to: is one better
> > > than the other?
> > 
> > The communicator package in contrib is a meta package that depends upon
> > the real packages in non-free.  Rather than downloading and trying to
> > install it, let apt-get handle the dependencies for you 
> > (apt-get install communicator).
> > 
> 
> Hmmm, ok.  What's strange is, using 'apt' with dselect the whole
> time, an 'update' and 'install' chose to download and install the
> "previously deselected", non-free versions of Communicator thus
> creating a conflict (now if I go to 'select', it wants to rectify
> this conflict upon exiting).  Shouldn't 'apt' with dselect have been
> just as good at handling the dependencies as 'apt-get'?  And now
> that I have the conflict, should I let 'select's resolution of
> removing the non-free packages prevail?

I find that as time goes by (I've been a Debian user for over four
years), I use dselect less and less.  Often it will want to remove
packages and the dependency/conflict screens don't really seem to
explain what it is doing or why.