On Tue, Oct 09, 2007 at 09:41:06PM -0700, jekillen wrote: > Is apt-cdrom add a command line program? I did not see it in > administration > menu, only Synaptic which when launched presented dialogs about > Debian site files being no existent. I am not sitting at the machine at > this moment so I cannot reproduce the exact lines and error messages. > i found aptitude also but am at a loss as to how to proceed. > This is stuff either I have missed or it is not part of what I have to > hand. > I presume there would be man pages for these programs(?) > > I am strung between two worlds, gui ala Mac and command line Unix. >
Therein lies part of the problem. Linux has its roots in Unix. To be more "user friendly" it has packages that overlay the unix CLI with front-end GUIs. Yet, the basic documentation (e.g. debian-reference, harden-doc, etc) is focused on the traditional CLI. Everything should have a man page (e.g. man synaptic) and each package should have documentation either in e.g. /usr/share/doc/synaptic or in a separate e.g. synaptic-doc package. I don't know about synaptic itself since I use aptitude. Aptitude itself is a front-end enhancement of apt, and they all end up using dpkg to actually install each package. I suggest that you read the debian-reference manual (available as a package) and fire up a web browser and peruse the docs under /usr/share/doc. Debian is very powerful _and_ very flexible. This means that you have lots of choices but it also means that you have a lot of learning to do to make informed choices. Being debian, as long as you use the normal tools you shouldn't mess up your system; your choices are reversable. The best advice I can give you is to break projects down into small attainable goals and do one at a time. Don't try to predict what you need to install to achive something. Find the package that you want and apt will bring in whatever is needed to do it. Do read up in the reference the difference between depends, recommended, and suggest. I only have aptitude install depends; it presents me with a list of recommended and suggested packages before I go ahead with an install. You only need a full DTE (Gnome, KDE, Xfce) if you want all the bells and whistles of the DTE. If you just want to install a [Gnome | KDE | Xfce] app, just install the app and it will pull in what you want. For example, on my smaller system, I run icewm but I really like the Xfce terminal. My big box runs Xfce but I run several KDE apps. I've never had much luck with gnome apps (I think they focus on new features and less on tracking down bugs that cause them to crash). Enjoy. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
