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.

With my short time of Debian I actually preferred to use dselect (is this outdated now?).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".

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.

Both Synaptic and apt. But since Synaptic offers more information on what exactly a package does, it gets my vote.

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.

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.

i agree, i always try to use apt-get as long as i remember the package name. When searching for a new package like a ftp client or something like that then i'll use aptitude, but aptitude (like synaptic) take a while to load for me, because they have to load the /var/cache/apt/archives folder and that takes me a while (5-10 seconds) because i have a big cache that i access via NFS, because of this slightly irritating thing i always try to use apt-get because it is really fast and enjoyable. Sometimes when searching for a new package i'll use synaptic, because it is alot better at doing random searches to find new programs for a specific use, but the classical interface of aptitude is a friendly face, and i always have to use it via SSH anyways.

Another vote for apt-get

Another one for apt-get, just used to it I guess...

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.