On 02-Oct-03, 16:10 (CDT), Chris Cheney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> From what I have heard about aptitude it has the fun side effect of
> removing packages that it thinks you didn't purposely install.
[and]
> Further, if recommends/suggests are on how does a user manage to only
> install standard using aptitude? Maybe there should but a tasksel option
> for just installing standard and above?
Uh, have you ever looked at aptitude's options? Right there in the
menu...
FWIW, the only time I've had aptitude attempt to un-install packages
it thought were "not purposely" installed were when I installed .debs
directly with dpkg. Setting a filter on the auto-uninstall of 'lib'
would make this safer, but I've never bothered.
OTOH, it's damn near impossible to get dselect to not install
"Recommends". (Well, last time I checked, which has been a while...).
That's what drove me to aptitude, once aptitude got searching.
> Also aptitude's sort function was more user unfriendly than dselect by
> far (just hit 'o').
This is a valid complaint -- aptitude has very configurable sorting, but
it's not in any way, shape, or form, "user friendly". Of course, I never
really know what dselect would do when I hit 'o' (or 'O'), but I could
just hit it repeatedly until I got what I wanted.
> I happen to use the sort option in dselect often. If
> aptitude can be used as dselect is now, eg hit 'g' to download just
> standard it will be ok I suppose.
Hit 'l' to enter a display limit, '~pstandard' to display only standard
priority packages, move the cursor to the "Not Installed Packages" line,
and hit '+' to select them.
No, not particularly "intuitive", but a lot more general.
> I am not against aptitude, or a better package management tool in
> general, I just don't like the way aptitude currently "works".
Which is, of course, a perfectly valid POV. I never thought that dselect
was as horrible as many people made it out to be, but I think aptitude
is way beyond where dselect is now, and since both require some learning
to use, I don't see much point in pointing newbies at dselect.
FWIW, I don't think *either* is suitable as the first package
installation tool a new user sees (although the aptitude task view is
not bad) (Sorry, Daniel!) Aptitude is nice power tool for dealing with
6000+ packages (or whatever it is now), but newbies shouldn't ever see
that - by default, I mean.
Steve
--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net
