Re: Which installer? Aptitude, dselect deity...

[Jesse Goerz <jgoerz@bellsouth.net>]

On Wednesday 07 November 2001 14:10, David Z Maze wrote:
> ol1  <op> writes:
> ol1> Also sprach Preben Randhol:
>  PR> Which installer should I recommend to a beginner of
> Debian (and Linux?). PR>
>  PR> I remember I saw somewhere on the web an article that
> covered a lot of PR> debian installers, but I cannot seem to
> find it. ol1>
> ol1> apt-get
> ol1> all the gui stuff is just confusing.
>
> But how do you know what to type as parameters to apt-get if
> you're just starting?  'apt-get install' also misses a lot of
> things like Recommends: and package descriptions.
>
> Is the recommendation to someone using stable, or
> testing/unstable? In unstable/testing, I like aptitude quite a
> bit (though you should read /usr/share/doc/aptitude/README
> first, since there are a lot of things that aren't in the
> online documentation).  The version of aptitude in stable
> isn't particularly featureful, so for stable, I'd recommend
> learning to use dselect (it isn't actually as bad as people
> make it out to be).

I learned on dselect and used it for 2 months or so because I 
didn't even know there was a thing called apt-get.  I have long 
forgotten how to use dselect :).  Use apt-get, to find out more 
information on a package, like what is suggested and recommended 
check out the package you wish to install at:
http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages

I had been using this method for about a year before I even 
learned of apt-cache search, et all.

If you install a program and it's missing a feature, check for 
suggests and recommends, that almost always fixed what I thought 
was "broken."

You may also want to check out:
http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/

which has a newbie introduction to apt-get.  The site includes 
the beginning of (hopefully) a slew of newbie type documents to 
come. You can apt-get all the docs from unstable, and maybe 
testing as well (package is called newbiedoc).  If you don't 
know how or don't want to apt-get from unstable you can get 
tarballs from the site.

HTH,
Jesse