On Sat 06 Apr 2019 at 11:35:08 (+0100), Dominic Knight wrote: > On Sat, 2019-04-06 at 19:56 +1100, David wrote: > > On Sat, 6 Apr 2019 at 19:08, Curt <cu...@free.fr> wrote: > > > My impression from my general reading here is quite a few people > > > rely on > > > the synaptic package manager. I use apt-get; it's pie-like > > > simplicity > > > comforts me. > > > > Speaking in very broad terms to make a general and somewhat > > obvious point, we could say that Gnome and synaptic are examples of > > tools written by experts to assist lower-expertise users. > > > > It follows that most more-expert users (apart from the developers) > > tend > > not to use these kind of tools themselves. So support channels like > > this one > > and IRC tend to lack people who are able to answer questions based > > on their own use of these tools, because they don't use, or even care > > about, these kind of tools. > > > > I have seen this in IRC. People join there to ask questions > > about Gnome for example, but no-one providing support in the > > channel is actually using Gnome themselves, because they prefer more > > sophisticatedenvironments, even though it's the default GUI for > > Debian > > that all the newbie questioners are using. > > > > Newbie asks "how do I do X in Gnome" ... and no-one there knows the > > answer :) > > This might be less of an issue in other distros than it is in Debian. > > > > > Thing is, beyond its innate and fundamental heresy (a gui app > > > running as > > > root!), synaptic is the only GUI package manager available in > > > Debian > > > AFAIK (I'm uncertain whether kpackage is defunct or not). > > > > If I understand correctly, Reco mentioned another one earlier in the > > thread ... > > > > On Fri, 5 Apr 2019 at 00:02, Reco <recovery...@enotuniq.net> wrote: > > > The *unofficial* one is the existence of "gnome-packagekit". The > > > thing > > > needs users, and this is one of the ways of getting them. > > > > https://packages.debian.org/buster/gnome-packagekit > > https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-packagekit/stable/intro.html.en > > > > I know nothing about it, I never tried it :) > > I prefer using shell tools for package management. > > > > I certainly do use some GUI tools. 'meld' for example, for side-by- > > side > > diffs. If that was dropped from buster then I would notice :) > > > Lets take a look at installing gnome-packagekit and dependencies in > Buster; > > Retrieving bug reports... Done > Parsing Found/Fixed information... Done > serious bugs of unattended-upgrades (→ 1.11) <Outstanding> > b2 - #905877 - regression in 1.4: upgrades random packages from > testing to experimental (doesn't respect pinning?) > Summary: > unattended-upgrades(1 bug) > > > Then again perhaps not just yet
I'm not sure unattended-upgrades is wise for buster. But I'm happy that there are people who are prepared to test testing with such packages. OTOH unattended downloads are a different matter. I have 0 */3 * * * apt-get -qq update && apt-get -qq -d upgrade && find /var/cache/apt/archives/ -name '*deb' in root's crontab which also sends an email whenever packages are sitting in the cache. (My .bash_profile also checks that.) Cheers, David.