On Tue, 7 Jul 1998, Alex Kwan wrote:
> Would someone please explain that > 1) What is the apt-get install apt-get is a program and it comes with the apt package. Normally, one would do: apt-get update Which gets the Packages.gz files from the archive (ftp or cdrom, or whatever is in your /etc/apt/sources.list) describing what packages are available, along with some information about the packages, like dependencies. apt-get upgrade Will download and install all newer versions available on the archive of packages that you have installed on your system. dist-upgrade is a special target that does some extra checking (I think, `man apt` actually knows.) If you only want to install a package called foo that isn't on your system yet, you would do: apt-get install foo and apt will download and install that package and all other packages that it depends on. > 2) How to use apt-get install (step by step please) See the above. > 3) What is the difference between apt and dpkg Apt is a front-end to dpkg (or dpkg is the back-end to apt.) With dselect you can use apt as a method. This is highly advisable, because apt incorporates all the functionality of the older methods, but has many improvements, some of which might even be considered critical. In due time, apt will have a graphics (X11) and full-screen (curses or slang) interface itself. Many people call dselect a cruel and user-unfriendly program, probably because they don't understand it because they're too lame to RTFM. I'm perfectly happy with dselect myself and I think that it is the main reason why the debian packaging system is far more user-friendly than RedHat's system (glint really isn't even a faint comparison.) I would admit though that its key bindings could have been chosen to more intuitive. Others say dselect has no GUI, they think so probably because you can't control dselect with a mouse. Such people are IMHO degenerate and should be forced to pay more M$ tax. Full-screen is also a GUI, as command-line is a UI (but I think the same people would disagree with me on that as well.) Anyway, I hope that the full apt will be an improvement over what dselect already has like apt-get is an improvement to dselect compared to dselects older methods. Apt-get is not an improvement over dselect though. You can get apt from the following places: - (used to be) in the project/experimental directory on the ftp archive; - at http://www.debian.org/~jgg/ where you will also find a libc5 version, which comes in handy if you want to upgrade from libc5 to libc6. When using dselect, you shouldn't do this with any other mathod than the apt method (and you should RTFM anyway and if possible do the most critical part by hand); - (all future versions) in the regular distribution starting with slink (no, that's not hamm.) Cheers, Joost -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null
