Re: dselect, was Re: OT: RH and Debian brothers now?
On Saturday 27 September 2003 2:18 am, Terry Hancock wrote:
> 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.
>
Try synaptic.
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