Le 08.10.2013 15:28, Whit Hansell a écrit :
On 10/08/2013 08:57 AM, Morten Bo Johansen wrote:On 2013-10-08 Florian Lindner wrote:Both use libapt-pkg, so when used from the command line I don't think itWhat is the prefered tool for installing on the CLI? apt-get or aptitude? Last time I read about it, it was aptitude, due to betterdependency checking. What is the current state? apt-get or aptitude?Does it matter? What about using both?matters which you use. MortenI had asked the same question a year ago or so and changed from aptitude to apt-get with using dist-upgrade for upgrades on both. On aptitude I was getting recommended packages no being installed butthey are all installed using apt-get. I had always wondered about therecommends being held back and have found no problem having them installed using apt-get. Hope that helps. whit
This only depends on your configuration. Aptitude's default is to install recommended packages, as for apt-get I think. For apt-get, there is a command-line option "--no-install-recommends" which allows you to not install those. Probably aptitude have something like this too ( I only know about the GUI's option ) and they probably both are able to store that choice in some configuration file.
Installing recommended packages will probably not give you problems, if you do not care about your computer performances or the bandwith. Automatically adding recommended packages will add, and enable, services that you could never need, and on a server, adding services often means adding risks of bugs, and so of hacks. On my own computer, where I do not mind about being hacked ( at least, not at a point that I want to reinforce everything ) it will cost me resources: system and applications will be slower to start, and might even saturate my memory ( at least on my netbook with it's 1GB or ram ). It can also lead to behavior that I do not want.
But, this will add features you could like, too. I see recommended packages as suggestions, and suggested packages as "see also". They are not evil, they simply need thinking before enabling all of them, if you want an efficient system ( lacking some of them will also need to inefficient systems ).
Little example from here:Installing "only" network-manager-gnome and it's recommended packages leads to 345 packages automatically installed, 550MiB to download, and 193MiB to install (I use a tiling window manager and am as careful as my skills allows to avoid useless -for me- stuff, so, no complete DE). Installing it without recommended packages leads to 20 packages automatically installed, 28.2MiB to download, and 14.1MiB to install. Sounds like a nice hint about what is wrong with automatic installation of recommended packages for advanced users ;) ( here, it means 40 min to spend in downloads, at least, and it uses Debian's mirrors' bandwidth for nothing, too )