Do you use Synaptic?
I am just curious as to how many people prefer to use the GUI synaptic as opposed to the terminal apt-get for install/uninstalling programs.
I personally prefer synaptic because it's so much easier to browse and search for packages and I use synaptic for most purposes (upgrade/update/install). So do you use synaptic as an alternative to apt-get? |
Aptitude for me. I used synaptic about two years ago when I first installed Debian (via Morphix) -- it used to crash often and package searches took ages to perform. I've recently used synaptic again in Ubuntu and it seems to be now slicker than I remembered. But in the meanwhile I've gotten used to aptitude and I'm happy with it.
Some good things in aptitude: -- I can use aptitude from the console, without starting X session, or I can use it from a terminal window during X session -- aptitude is really fast (even on low-resource computers) -- before executing installs/upgrades/removals aptitude shows a screen about all the planned changes and in this screen it's really easy to manipulate which actions I want aptitude to perform and which not; also freezing packages to their current version is easy, just like it is to view which packages I have previously marked to be frozen -- in aptitude I can view any package's change log by highlighting the package and pressing "C" -- in aptitude it's easy to check depends/recommends/suggests for packages: highlight a package and press Enter (return to previous screen with "q") -- aptitude writes a log about all performed actions to /var/log/aptitude EDIT: I almost forgot: you can play the minesweeper game in aptitude. :D |
With my short time of Debian I actually preferred to use dselect (is this outdated now?). It was simple, and, with my Slack roots, I was much more at home.
Alunduil |
I had to select other because I use them both. apt-get if I know what I need and synaptic if I need to cache-search, or if I'm just "shopping".
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I have used both but prefer using apt alone as once one gets used to it, it's much quicker than going into root and then firing up synaptic.
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Both Synaptic and apt. But since Synaptic offers more information on what exactly a package does, it gets my vote.
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Aptitude and synaptic are new smart frontends to APT, they are better at resolving dependencies than apt-get. This is why the Sarge installation documentation recommends using aptitude instead of apt-get in upgrading from Woody to Sarge.
http://www.debian.org/releases/testi...ading_aptitude |
Aptitude to install, uninstall, freeze packages.
KPackage for info (much more detailed than Synaptic) |
Apt-get is the best. No point in messing around with some GUI tool when you can do it easily from the command line.
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I tend to browse with Synaptic if I don't know the name of the package I'm looking for but use apt-get on the command line if I know what I'm after.
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Quote:
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Another vote for apt-get
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Another one for apt-get, just used to it I guess...
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About compiling from source. I don't know how many of you do it, but somehow in Debian it always feels unclean to install programs from any source other than the apt/dpkg system.
I always prefer a particular technique while using an OS and I don't like breaking things by mixing and matching methods. Would make upgrading and maintenance a problem. Do any of you compile programs from source in Debian? I always think that that's a better choice in a distro like Slackware which gives full control anyway to the user. I always dislike the half/half business: half manual installation/half automated. Either this way or that: nothing in between. |
I compile the kernel, ndiswrapper, alsa and mplayer from source. But I don't upgrade them much if they work. Mplayer doesn't often have updates. For the kernel I should do the security stuff, but I haven't done that yet, newer kernels often break my video card drivers and the newest nvidia drivers don't work with my card. Same for alsa and ndiswrapper, I check once in a while and then upgrade it.
For searching new packages I use apt-cache search. |
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