On Mon, 19 Jan 2015 04:54:57 -0500 Gene Heskett <[email protected]> wrote:
> > But that leads to the next logical question: What's the difference > between using apt-get to do that, and synaptic? > > Synaptic would have literally torn down the system, removing libc6, > most of build-essentials among many many others. I like synaptic, > but that difference is an eye opener for sure. > By default, Synaptic arrives with everything turned on: it does a full-upgrade/dist-upgrade, it treats recommends as dependencies, etc. All of this can be disabled, just as it can be enabled in apt-get or aptitude. Horses for courses: they all do the same basic job, but with slightly different features. If I want to install, remove or purge a single application I know about, or do a routine upgrade, I normally use aptitude non-interactively. Nearly all my upgrade work is with unstable, and that does get into difficult situations from time to time, when some packages can't be upgraded without significant removals. I usually switch to Synaptic then, in which I find I can most easily set up the combinations of upgradable packages which work. I upgrade my unstable workstation pretty much every day, but I have three or four other unstables which are used much more rarely, and get upgraded every few months, when I have the time. Aptitude is good at sorting out dependencies, supposedly still better than apt-get, but if you throw five or six hundred upgrades at it, it does often freak out and it sits there literally for hours working out combinations... so for these large-scale upgrades, an apt-get upgrade followed by a dist-upgrade seems to be the optimal choice. I don't generally do these occasional upgrades while there is a pending problem with unstable, so I don't usually have difficulties. -- Joe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: https://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
