On (20/04/04 22:27), Joey Hess wrote: > J.S.Sahambi wrote: > > I have been using apt and dselect for some time. Can any body tell me > > about the advantages/disadvantages of dselect and aptitude? and which is > > better? > > Nine reasons why you should be using aptitude instead of apt-get or dselect. > > 1. aptitude can look just like apt-get > > If you run 'aptitude update' or 'aptitude upgrade' or 'aptitude > install', it looks and works just like apt-get, with a few enhancements. > So there is no learning curve. > > (If you're a dselect user, learning curve is obviously not one of your > problems.) > > 2. aptitude tracks automatically installed packages > > Stop worrying about pruning unused libraries and support packages from > your system. If you use aptitude to install everything, it will keep > track of what packages are pulled in by dependencies alone, and remove > those packages when they are no longer needed. > > 3. aptitude sanely handles recommends > > A long-standing failure of apt-get has been its lack of support for > the Recommends relationship. Which is a problem because many packages > in Debian rely on Recommends to pull in software that the average user > generally uses with the package. This is a not uncommon cause of > trouble, even though apt-get recently became able to at least mention > recommended packages, it's easy to miss its warnings. > > Aptitude supports Recommends by default, and can be confgigured to > support Suggests too. It even supports installing recommended packages > when used in command-line mode. > > 4. use aptitude as a normal user and avoid hosing your system > > Maybe you didn't know that you can run aptitude in gui mode as a regular > user. Make any changes you'd like to try out. If you get into a real > mess, you can hit 'q' and exit, your changes will not be saved. > (Aptitude also lets you use ctrl-u to undo changes.) Since it's running > as a normal user, you cannot hose your system until you tell aptitude to > do something, at which point it will prompt you for your root password. > > 5. aptitude has a powerful UI and searching capabilities > > Between aptitude's categorical browser and its great support for > mutt-style filtering and searching of packages by name, description, > maintainer, dependencies, etc, you should be able to find packages > faster than ever before using aptitude. > > 6. aptitude makes it easy to keep track of obsolete software > > If Debian stops distributing a package, apt will leave it on your system > indefinitly, with no warnings, and no upgrades. Aptitude lists such > packages in its "Obsolete and Locally Created Packages" section, so you > can be informed of the problem and do something about it. > > 7. aptitude has an interface to the Debian task system > > Aptitude lets you use Debian's task system as it was designed to be > used. You can browse the available tasks, select a task for install, and > then dig into it and de-select parts of the task that you don't want. > apt-get has no support for tasks, and aptitude is better even than > special purpose tools like tasksel. > > 8. aptitude supports multiple sources > > If your sources.list is configured to make multiple versions of a > package available, aptitude lets you drill down to see the available > versions and pick a non-default version to install. If a package breaks > in unstable, just roll it back to the version in testing. > > 9. aptitude logs its actions > > Aptitude logs package it installs, upgrades, and removes to > /varlog/aptitude, which can be useful to work out why things started > breaking after yesterday's upgrade, or when you removed a partiticlar > package. Thanks Joey
This is very useful. I've been using aptitude for a while (moved from dselect, which I was reasonably happy with) and found it better than dselect for reasons I found difficult to articulate. Not only have you articulated all the reasons I like it but highlighted features I haven't yet discovered ;) Regards Clive -- http://www.clivemenzies.co.uk strategies for business -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
