Re: Number of Debian packages available.

[Lisi <lisi.reisz@gmail.com>]

On Tuesday 16 October 2012 11:46:01 Titanus Eramius wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:30:41 +0100
>
> Lisi <lisi.reisz@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello, all!
> > I have searched Wikipedia and the Debian wiki.  I have Googled.  I am
> > clearly using the wrong search terms, although I tried rewording in
> > sundry different ways.
> >
> > Approximately, in round terms, how may packages are available in
> > Debian (Squeeze?)
> > 1. in main
> > 2. in main, contrib and non-free
> >
> > I have an idea of roughly 20,000 in my head, but cannot remember why
> > I think it and it may be vastly out.  Nor into which of my two
> > categories the figure falls, if by any miracle it is correct.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Lisi
>
> Maybe from Synaptic? It lists a total of packages it can fetch in the
> bottom left corner. I have all three archives active + backports,
> testing and unstable and Synaptic reports 43132 packages is available.

Thanks!  That is exactly what I wanted to know.  I have not got Synaptic 
installed, since I prefer the command line for package management.  Perhaps 
the information is also available in aptitude's n-curses interface.  I didn't 
think to look. :-(  There is also probably a command line way to do it in 
either apt-get or aptitude.  I just don't know it. :-(

> But the question might be, what's a package, and what's a libary? Just
> my thoughts though.

D'oh!  I had thought (or rather, clearly not thought) that for present 
purposes that wasn't all that significant.  Though come to think of it, that 
may be why I had the figure of 20,000 in my head.  Applications and not 
libraries.

So I asked the wrong question anyway.

Thanks for all the pointers!

Lisi