Re: using dselect (was: Re: debian installation help)

[Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org>]

  I think I understand.

  The "expected" workflow in aptitude is that you pick all the changes
you want to make, then ask aptitude to show you all the changes that
will be made (including ones that were required by your past changes).
If you like it, you confirm that it's OK and aptitude applies the
changes.

  The "expected" workflow in dselect is that as you pick each change
that you want to make, dselect jumps to a screen where it tells you all
the other changes it's about to make because they were required by what
you just did.  If you like them, you confirm that they're OK and
dselect drops you back to the main package list.  Once you've finished
picking changes, you tell dselect to proceed with applying them all.

  Believe me, there are people who hate the dselect model just as
passionately as you hate how aptitude does it; aptitude was deliberately
designed to be different for just this reason.  Luckily, we still have
both options and you can use the one that works for you. :-)

  But aptitude does *not* remove software without asking -- it just
asks in a different place.

  Daniel