Re: dselect, was Re: OT: RH and Debian brothers now?
On Friday 26 September 2003 10:29 am, Pigeon wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 02:52:12AM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 27, 2003 at 08:26:32AM +1200, cr wrote:
> > > I appreciate that dselect is only part of the install process, albeit the
> > > largest part timewise if one uses it.
> > You don't have to, though.
> Yeah, but what are the choices?
>
> Run tasksel (y/n)? (frequently too coarse)
> Run dselect (y/n)? (we all know about this one :-) )
> Do it by hand afterwards - somewhat inconvenient and daunting for a
> new user
Yeah, I agree that dselect is awful (to be fair, it probably wasn't so bad
when there were fewer packages to wade through). I have stopped
using it, myself.
I recommend using "tasksel" to rough out the system, then using apt-get
to finish the job. The tasksel will give you a working system with the basics
you need that you may not know by name. Then the apt-get will allow
you to ask for everything you specifically know you want.
The downside is that it may be a little hard to find the correct package
names by what they do or what commands they include. I have only
just recently learned that there are ways to query this on the command
line (but they may only work for installed packages?). Anyway, myself,
I make used of the "packages search" on the Debian website to make
those determinations.
Usually, you can just use apt-get to load stuff as you need it after that.
And of course, once you get a collection of packages you like, you
can use the dpkg --get-selections and dpkg --set-selections to save
and retrieve your choices or replicate onto multiple computers.
HTH,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com
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