Re:

[Rob Owens <rowens@ptd.net>]

On Mon, Aug 02, 2010 at 07:54:21PM -0500, Kent West wrote:
> On 8/2/10 7:06 PM, juan gonzalez wrote:
> > all right, I have 2 questions. can I use .deb files on the the teminal
> > version? and can I upgrade from the terminal one to the desktop one?
> > and how?
> >
> >
> >   
> Yes; if you just have a .deb (say, "whatever.deb"), you can install it
> with "dpkg -i whatever.deb".
> 
> However, as a general rule, you don't want to install .deb files
> directly, because if whatever.deb is dependent on whatsit.deb which is
> dependent on yeah_but.deb, etc etc, then it could quickly become painful
> to install a program.
> 
> Instead, you want to use aptitude (or apt-get) to install a program. In
> this case, it'd probably be "aptitude install whatever", which will
> automagically install whatever and whatsit and yeah_but and whatever
> else might be needed.
> 
> You can also run a curses-based (text-based) point-and-click style
> interface of aptitude by just running "aptitude", but honestly, that
> confuses me more than just using the command-line mode of aptitude.
> 
I like the interactive curses-based aptitude, but I was confused by it
at first.  Here are some hints in case you decide to try it:

u	update the package list
+	mark a package for installation
-	mark a package for uninstallation
g	"go" and install/uninstall the marked packages
_	purge a package
ctrl-u	undo
<enter>	expand/collapse a menu/category, or get details on a package
q	quit whatever mode you are in
/	search
n	when searching, find the next match
N	when searching, find the previous match

and don't forget that you can use your mouse to access the menus.  I'm
not sure if that requires an x-server or not, though.

-Rob