On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 03:31:19PM -0500, Mumia W.. wrote: > On 08/19/2007 02:25 PM, Manon Metten wrote: >> Hi Douglas, >> On 8/19/07, Douglas A. Tutty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Note that many of the horror stories about aptitude involved >>> people using it as a CLI replacement for apt-get instead of using its >>> curses interface. >> Are you saying I should NOT use aptitude as a replacement for >> apt-get, like this: "aptitude install new-package" ? >> I've been using aptitude like this all the time ever since I installed >> etch >> with no problems whatsoever. >> What's the problem of doing so and not using it's user interface? >> Manon. > > I almost exclusively use aptitude under Sarge. Both the curses and command > line interfaces work perfectly, and I've never had or heard of a horror > story involving aptitude*. > > And aptitude is clearly the most advanced interface to the packaging > system. > > I only use apt-get when I need to install from the source (which aptitude > cannot do).
I wonder why that is; the source packages are independent of binary ones. > I'm also curious about what problems other people are having with aptitude. I haven't tried aptitude for some time, and apparently the problem I had with it (where it wanted to remove a lot of stuff) has been fixed. I think that, even before that fix, it would work reasonably (i.e., no surprises) as long as it was used exclusively. I normally use apt-get, and tried aptitude after seeing that it was going to be the default, but have since shied away from it. > * However, I never do anything at the command line that hasn't been > verified as safe. I always use the curses interface to find out what is > going to happen before I enter a command at the command line. I'm pretty sure that aptitude will provide a detailed list of packages that it intends to remove, and unless you use the -y or --yes option (assuming there is one), it was and is safe to at least try it out on the command line. Not sure I can explain why, but I prefer the command line interface over an "environment" that you get into and navigate and control from within (and sometimes may have trouble finding a way out of...). I do use and have learned vi/vim, so I'm not unwilling to do this kind of thing, but plan to stick with apt-get on the command line until there's some compelling reason to do so. I also tried wajig, which is a wrapper around apt-get and some other commands, but find that I prefer using the "real thing" directly. Ken -- Ken Irving, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]