> > > Is it true I should avoid APT and use some other frontend or, better, > dpkg directly? > I tried aptitude, but I don't like ncurses-based tools. I prefer the > classic command line if possible. > > You'll rarely need to use dpkg directly,it's lowest level of package management, it does no have any dependency resolving capabilities (others may correct me if I'm wrong).
you can use aptitude as average command line tool, i mean, aptitude update, aptitude install foo will work quite same way as apt-get. as of Lenny release, aptitude is "officially" suggested tool, but as I recall, this will change in favor of apt-get. as of choosing, it depends on your choice, e.g. i like aptitude because of its (fantastic for me) interactive dependency resolution system. apt-get is less verbose, and apt-get is much faster (or maybe its me) when there must be performed massive upgrade, e.g. when I was dist-upgrading, aptitude took ~15 minutes for dependency calculations, while apt-get did dependency resolution in couple of minutes. all in all after using these tools you'll find you favorite, I'm sure. How can I obtain the list of sources currently used by installed packages? > For example, since I have "gcc" installed, it should show "main", and > since I also have "firmware-iwlwifi", it should include "non-free", > too. > This is for checking if /etc/apt/sources.list is consistent with > installed packages. with aptitude-s ncurses interface, but I'm sure there must be some command line switch in apt-get. I'm not sure if the following procedure is right for staying up to date: > apt-get update; apt-get upgrade; apt-get autoremove --purge; apt-get > autoclean > Am I missing something else? that's usually enough in my case. but, there's brilliant tool called - apt-listbugs - on every upgrade it checks bugs against marked for upgrade packages, and if it finds one, it asks you if you want to proceed, excellent tool, especially if you run sid or testing. Regards ----------- Roman
