Re: catastrophe - but how? Aptitude goes mad

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

On Sunday 03 July 2016 17:11:43 Wes wrote:
> On 2016-06-30, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > I ran
> > # aptitude install libreoffice-grammarcheck-en-gb
> > and aptitude just carried on without asking as is correct when there
> > is only one package; but it proceeded to uninstall my entire desktop
> > environment, hundreds of packages.
>
> Both apt-get and aptitude have an option -s (for "simulate").
>
> Instead of actually doing anything, with the -s option
> apt-get/aptitude will just pretend to do it (in their characteristically
> verbose fashion).
>
> So when I'm not certain what an install or upgrade will do, I first do
>
> # apt-get -s [whatever-thing-I'm-considering-doing-for-real]
>
> -wes
>
> (BTW, sorry for breaking out of the thread; I'm not subscribed to the
> list.)

The problem was that I thought that I knew what installing one package would 
do. :-(  I have installed single packages to LibreOffice, and before that ot 
OpenOffice quite often before.  One sometimes has to learn the hard way.  But 
aptitude does usually ask!  I shall be investigating this at a later date.

But thanks for reminding me to use -s!!!

Lisi