nther <chris> writes: CG> what is all this apt-get about? CG> CG> What is it good for and how does it work
APT stands for "A Package Tool". It's essentially a wrapper around the Debian package manager, dpkg, that provides some useful functionality. You tell APT where Debian packages can be downloaded from, giving it a list of "sources". Running 'apt-get update' will instruct APT to download lists of packages and figure out what can be downloaded from where and what it all depends on. APT can then be used to cleanly upgrade bits of your system. 'apt-get upgrade' will download and install all of the packages needed to upgrade packages currently installed on your system to the current version; 'apt-get dist-upgrade' will upgrade cleanly from one version of Debian to another. (As in, to upgrade from the current "stable" distribution to the current "frozen" distribution, now in testing, one needs to: -- Change "stable" to "frozen" in /etc/apt/sources.list -- Run 'apt-get update' -- Run 'apt-get dist-upgrade' ...and that's it!) You can also use APT to install a specific package. You can run, for example, 'apt-get install mozilla', and APT will download and install, in the correct order, the mozilla package and all of its dependencies. APT also integrates with the traditional Debian package manager front-end, dselect, and has a couple of front-ends of its own. -- David Maze [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://donut.mit.edu/dmaze/ "Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal." -- Abra Mitchell