* Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> [2004:04:20:22:27:12-0400] scribed: > J.S.Sahambi wrote: > > I have been using apt and dselect for some time. Can any body tell me > > about the advantages/disadvantages of dselect and aptitude? and which is > > better? > > Nine reasons why you should be using aptitude instead of apt-get or dselect. > > 1. aptitude can look just like apt-get > > If you run 'aptitude update' or 'aptitude upgrade' or 'aptitude > install', it looks and works just like apt-get, with a few enhancements. > So there is no learning curve. > > (If you're a dselect user, learning curve is obviously not one of your > problems.) > > 2. aptitude tracks automatically installed packages > > Stop worrying about pruning unused libraries and support packages from > your system. If you use aptitude to install everything, it will keep > track of what packages are pulled in by dependencies alone, and remove > those packages when they are no longer needed. > > 3. aptitude sanely handles recommends > > A long-standing failure of apt-get has been its lack of support for > the Recommends relationship. Which is a problem because many packages > in Debian rely on Recommends to pull in software that the average user > generally uses with the package. This is a not uncommon cause of > trouble, even though apt-get recently became able to at least mention > recommended packages, it's easy to miss its warnings. > > Aptitude supports Recommends by default, and can be confgigured to > support Suggests too. It even supports installing recommended packages > when used in command-line mode. > > 4. use aptitude as a normal user and avoid hosing your system > > Maybe you didn't know that you can run aptitude in gui mode as a regular > user. Make any changes you'd like to try out. If you get into a real > mess, you can hit 'q' and exit, your changes will not be saved. > (Aptitude also lets you use ctrl-u to undo changes.) Since it's running > as a normal user, you cannot hose your system until you tell aptitude to > do something, at which point it will prompt you for your root password. > > 5. aptitude has a powerful UI and searching capabilities > > Between aptitude's categorical browser and its great support for > mutt-style filtering and searching of packages by name, description, > maintainer, dependencies, etc, you should be able to find packages > faster than ever before using aptitude. > > 6. aptitude makes it easy to keep track of obsolete software > > If Debian stops distributing a package, apt will leave it on your system > indefinitly, with no warnings, and no upgrades. Aptitude lists such > packages in its "Obsolete and Locally Created Packages" section, so you > can be informed of the problem and do something about it. > > 7. aptitude has an interface to the Debian task system > > Aptitude lets you use Debian's task system as it was designed to be > used. You can browse the available tasks, select a task for install, and > then dig into it and de-select parts of the task that you don't want. > apt-get has no support for tasks, and aptitude is better even than > special purpose tools like tasksel. > > 8. aptitude supports multiple sources > > If your sources.list is configured to make multiple versions of a > package available, aptitude lets you drill down to see the available > versions and pick a non-default version to install. If a package breaks > in unstable, just roll it back to the version in testing. > > 9. aptitude logs its actions > > Aptitude logs package it installs, upgrades, and removes to > /varlog/aptitude, which can be useful to work out why things started > breaking after yesterday's upgrade, or when you removed a partiticlar > package. > > -- > see shy jo I would have been using aptitude long ago, _except_ for this hurdle on my systems: # sudo aptitude -P upgrade Password: Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree Reading extended state information... Done The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED: antiword debiandoc-sgml debiandoc-sgml-doc debsums dhelp djbdns-doc djtools doc-html-w3 docbook docbook-defguide docbook-doc docbook-dsssl docbook-dsssl-doc docbook-mathml docbook-xsl emacs20-el esound foo2zjs foomatic-db foomatic-db-engine foomatic-db-gimp-print foomatic-db-hpijs foomatic-filters foomatic-gui fortune-mod fortunes-min freefont freetype1-tools fttools gimp gimp-perl gimpprint-doc gimpprint-locales gnome-doc-tools gnome-vfs-extras2 hpijs html2ps ijsgimpprint imlib-progs irb jade jadetex karbon kchart kformula kivio koffice koshell kpresenter kspread kugar kword libdv-bin libdv2 libgimp1.2 libgtkxmhtml1 libjcode-pm-perl libmpeg1 libpng10-dev libpng2-dev libreadline-ruby librecode0 libroman-perl libsgmls-perl libsp1 libterm-readkey-perl libtext-format-perl libtiff-tools linuxdoc-tools linuxdoc-tools-info linuxdoc-tools-latex linuxdoc-tools-text man2html manpages-dev netcat netpbm-nonfree opensp pchar pdl perlmagick perlsgml pgperl pgplot5 psgml python-glade2 python-gnome2 python-optik python-xml python2.2-glade2 python2.2-gnome2 python2.2-gtk2 python2.2-optik python2.2-pyorbit python2.2-xml python2.2-xmlbase recode reportbug ruby-examples sgml-base-doc sgmls-doc sgmlspl sp spell swish++ t1utils transfig ttf-arphic-bkai00mp ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp ttf-arphic-gkai00mp ttf-xtt-wadalab-gothic ttf-xtt-watanabe-mincho ttmkfdir type1inst w3-dtd-mathml w3-recs w3-recs-2002 w3-recs-2003 w3c-dtd-xhtml xfig xfig-doc xpdf-utils xscreensaver-gnome The following packages have been kept back: bastille x-window-system-core The following packages will be upgraded: arts dictionaries-common fontconfig gnome-vlc kernel-package libarts1 libartsc0 libdevmapper1.00 libfontconfig1 libfontconfig1-dev libhtml-parser-perl libxml2 libxslt1.1 links mozilla-plugin-vlc ntp ntp-doc ntp-server ntp-simple ntpdate proftpd proftpd-common python2.3-gnome2 scsitools ssh synaptic ucf vlc vlc-plugin-esd xmms 30 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 123 to remove and 2 not upgraded. Need to get 14.5MB of archives. After unpacking 342MB will be freed. *HOW* should I get around *ALL* of those REMOVED's ??? -- Best Regards, mds mds resource 877.596.8237 - Dare to fix things before they break . . . - Our capacity for understanding is inversely proportional to how much we think we know. The more I know, the more I know I don't know . . . --
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