[ale] Ubuntu help

[Preston Boyington]

James Sumners wrote:
> Sorry to belabor the point, but aptitude is NOT a frontend for
> dselect
<snipped>

you are right.  (i corrected myself right after i sent the earlier reply)


> if you are using aptitude like apt-get, why not just use apt-get? I don't believe
> exchanging "apt-get install foo" for "aptitude install foo" reduces
> the number of steps to install foo.

this too is true.  if i do this it is to keep 'aptitude' in the loop
about what is being installed and removed.

i use the ncurses interface mostly.

> if you fire up the full ncurses interface for aptitude you certainly aren't reducing the
> number of steps; you are actually increasing the number of steps.


hmm... ok.  i guess it could be more steps, that is negligible.  plus
the payoff is worth it.

here's an example of my using Aptitude:

(in an open terminal)

sudo aptitude (opens Aptitude ncurses interface)
"u" (which does 'aptitude update')
"+" by 'Upgradable Packages'
"g" shows me what will happen
"g" (again) tells it to get to work with my package changes

now the "why" i use the ncurses interface.  say i am holding several
packages back from updating for whatever reasons (perhaps one is fglrx
driver).  when i do an update it will return that it wants to remove
"fglrx driver".  since i don't want that to happen i can press "e"
(examine) and then cycle through various options for my update.  when i
find the one that i like i press "!" and that tells aptitude that i am
happy with my decision and then i press the last "g".  aptitude then
goes to work.

(written out it looks like a lot, but in action is only a few keystrokes)

with just the command line input of "apt-get upgrade" (or dist-upgrade)
my packages would have been updated to the latest version no matter if
it breaks something else.  (this happened to me a few years ago when
xorg transitioned and it hosed my desktop)

sure i could use 'apt-get upgrade --dry-run' to see what would happen,
but why when i can see it in the ncurses interface and then cycle my
options?  if i don't like my options i will just exit aptitude and wait
a few days.  (remember i am running Unstable & Testing sources with a
few Experimental ones thrown in for fun)

Preston

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