On (30/09/03 20:56), Joey Hess wrote: > I used dselect for 6 years or so. I have even fixed some of its bugs and > added things like configurable colors to it. Eventually though, it just > comes time to move on to the next better thing. Aptitude has many > features dselect lacks. For me the killer feature was tracking of > automatically removed packages, so old libraries don't pile up. > > I've attached my aptitude tips document. While it is mostly aimed at > apt-get users, most of the points apply to dselect users too. > > > Also, there are no new packages available that I don't know about yet > > ... will aptitude tell me about them in a really obvious way, as dselect > > does by putting them right up top? If I look at them in aptitude, will > > they still show up as new in dselect, or will they be marked as seen? > > They use different lists of what's new, one does not effect the other. > > Aptitude displays new pacages in a "New packages" section which behaves > much like dselect's, except it does not clear it until you press the 'c' > key. This is useful, I remember accidentially exiting dselect and losing > new packages I had not yet reviewed. With aptitude I can put off looking > at new packages until I feel like it. > > -- > see shy jo
> Seven reasons why you should be using aptitude instead of apt-get. > > 1. aptitude can look just like apt-get > > If you run 'aptitude update' or 'aptitude upgrade' or 'aptitude > install', it looks and works just like apt-get, with a few enhancements. > So there is no learning curve. > > 2. aptitude tracks automatically installed packages > > Stop worrying about pruning unused libraries and support packages from > your system. If you use aptitude to install everything, it will keep > track of what packages are pulled in by dependencies alone, and remove > those packages when they are no longer needed. > > 3. aptitude sanely handles recommends > > A long-standing failure of apt-get has been its lack of support for > the Recommends relationship. Which is a problem because many packages > in Debian rely on Recommends to pull in software that the average user > generally uses with the package. This is a not uncommon cause of > trouble, even though apt-get recently became able to at least mention > recommended packages, it's easy to miss its warnings. > > Aptitude supports Recommends by default, and can be confgigured to > support Suggests too. It even supports installing recommended packages > when used in command-line mode. > > 4. use aptitude as a normal user and avoid hosing your system > > Maybe you didn't know that you can run aptitude in gui mode as a regular > user. Make any changes you'd like to try out. If you get into a real > mess, you can hit 'q' and exit, your changes will not be saved. > (aptitude also lets you use ctrl-u to undo changes). Since it's running > as a normal user, you cannot hose your system until you tell aptitude to > do something, at which point it will prompt you for your root password. > > 5. aptitude has a powerful UI and searching capabilities > > Between aptitude's categorical browser and its great support for > mutt-style filtering and searching of packages by name, description, > maintainer, dependencies, etc, you should be able to find packages > faster than ever before using aptitude. > > 6. aptitude makes it easy to keep track of obsolete software > > If Debian stops distributing a package, apt will leave it on your system > indefinitly, with no warnings, and no upgrades. Aptitude lists such > packages in its "Obsolete and Locally Created Packages" section, so you > can be informed of the problem and do something about it. > > 7. aptitude has an interface to the Debian task system > > Aptitude lets you use Debian's task system as it was designed to be > used. You can browse the available tasks, select a task for install, and > then dig into it and de-select parts of the task that you don't want. > apt-get has no support for tasks, and aptitude is better even than > special purpose tools like tasksel. Thanks Joey This is pretty compelling stuff ;) Having mainly used dselect, I think I really need to try aptitude. Regards Clive -- http://www.clivemenzies.co.uk strategies for business -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
