I just installed sarge with the 2.6.8 kernel about a week ago (2nd install, 1st was with the 2.4 kernel & had way too many problems). I have been using 'apt-get install' to install most programs the past week. Trying to troubleshoot a printer problem, I decided to run the apptitude gui.

I looked for cups & sure enough, it sez cupsys-bsd has unmet dependencies & also cupsys-bsd conflicts with lpr. I think fine, maybe that explains why I cant print. Then I start scrolling down further & find a dozen other programs that are 'broken' with unmet dependencies, mozilla firefox & thunderbird, alien, gnome-audio, localepurge, deborphan, apt list-bugs.

These are all programs I've spent time setting up/configuring & like. In particular I was impressed when localepurge freed up 20m of disk space. Now aptitude comes along & sez, nope, we've got to remove that one!. In fact it looks like aptitude wants to remove all the programs I installed with 'apt-get install'! and, evidently, it wont let you just install the
missing parts, you have to remove everything thats 'broken'!

I was just getting comfortable with apt-get & have read a lot of people praising it. I cant believe apt-get is so stupid that it goes along merrily installing programs with broken dependencies, leaving booby traps all over your system.

I think I'll leave things as they are while I look into this apt-get/apptitude thing.

I would be interested in the opinions of any long-time debian users on this apt-get vs aptitude mess. Maybe there should be a warning to those just learning debian: DO NOT USE APT-GET.

Errr...apt-get is the easiest way to install apps that I've ever used. How about trying the Synaptic Package Manager ("sudo apt-get install synaptic")?

Just a sec...please can you explain yourself before you go off jumping to random conclusions: can you run all the programs that you installed via apt-get? If you can, do they run properly? Now, if they all run properly, then why are you going on about broken dependancies? What's this about cupsys-bsd - why don't you just install CUPS? Do you really need the BSD commands for CUPS?

Please try to explain yourself, and then it may be easier for us to answer your questions.

J_K9

the reason I'm going on about broken dependencies is in the 1st paragraph of my post.

To recap, I ran the aptitude gui (aptitude from the command line) cause I had run out of ideas troubleshooting my nonprinting problem. I look at this aptitude thing, & it sez cupsys-bsd has broken dependencies, along with 7 or 8 other programs that I had previouly installed with 'apt-get install'.

It has all these programs marked for removal, 75mb worth of stuff. Bright red lines through them whith UNSATISFIED at the right hand margin.

Now I don't know if aptitude is full of baloney or if apt-get install somehow managed to install the programs wrong. don't know which one to trust, hence the title of my post.

I ran localepurge & that seemed to run fine, as did deborphan. Firefox seems ok for surfing tho I did notice it wouldn't install the java plug in when I went to a site that used it. told me it couldn;t do it & I should do it manually. The other programs, alien, thunderbird,etc I haven't used yet. Been too busy trying to fix internet, sound, printer problems. Just installed debian last week.

Aptitude is full of baloney in my view. To check if they have broken dependancies, why don't you run all the programs you downloaded via apt-get, and if they all work properly, then also run other programs which have similar dependancies.

What I'm saying is why is there no need to worry about broken dependencies if you aren't even sure yet. Have you downloaded the Synaptic Package Manager? IMHO it's better than aptitude, and it has never "lied" to me.

J_K9

P.S You may want to ask a slightly more knowledgable, proper, full-on Debian user!

thanks to google, I may be closer to an answer:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=299009

Tho this doesn't describe exactly what I did ( I installed from command line with apt-get & once from command line with aptitude), his results are very similar.

I did boot to my kanotix install & took a look at synaptic. It does look more user friendly & straightforward so I'll install in debian & see what it sez.

One thing that confuses me tho, is they claim that aptitude is a 'front end' for apt (as in apt-get?), but maybe that just means they share the same database & are interpreting it differently.

more info:
I found synaptic was already installed, ran it, told it to search for broken & it found none.

I also figured out how to run aptitude from command line so I could capture its output, ehich is:

Script started on Sat 16 Jul 2005 11:58:28 AM AKDT
debian:~# aptitude -f install

Reading Package Lists... 0%

Reading Package Lists... 100%

Reading Package Lists... Done


Building Dependency Tree... 0%

Building Dependency Tree... 0%

Building Dependency Tree... 50%

Building Dependency Tree... 50%

Building Dependency Tree


Reading extended state information... 0%

Reading extended state information... 0%

Reading extended state information... 65%

Reading extended state information


Initializing package states... 0%

Initializing package states... Done


Reading task descriptions... 0%

Reading task descriptions... Done

The following packages have been kept back:
libkrb53
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libevent1 libident libldap-2.2-7 libnfsidmap1 libtasn1-0
The following packages will be REMOVED:
alien apt-listbugs debconf-utils debfoster debhelper deborphan dialog
gawk gnome-audio html2text intltool-debian libdpkg-ruby1.8
libintl-gettext-ruby1.8 librpm4 libruby1.8 libxml-parser-ruby1.8
localepurge mozilla-firefox mozilla-thunderbird po-debconf rpm ruby
ruby1.8
0 packages upgraded, 5 newly installed, 23 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/227kB of archives. After unpacking 76.2MB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] n
Abort.
debian:~# exit

Script done on Sat 16 Jul 2005 11:58:51 AM AKDT

I'm a little perplexed here, on the one hand I'd rather not believe aptitude cause i dont want to remove firefox, deborphan, localepurge, etc ,on the other hand, I dont want a broken sustem either & I have had a number of config problems & stuff not working since I installed debian.

Hopefully, a debian expert will spot this & chime in.

I use aptitude for just about everything (except for apt-get update). Aptitude is really picky about broken dependencies. If you have such broken dependencies it may start doing things like trying to remove the broken packages. And yes, sometimes these packages may still work for you even though all of their dependencies are not fulfilled.

You just need to get the dependencies worked out and everything will be OK. I find aptitude better for this than synaptic. Sometimes it can be a struggle. Especially if something that one program depends on conflicts with something that another program depends on. But this kind of thing is more common with unstable. You should be able to get it worked out without too much trouble in sarge.

I've been reading up on all 3 of these pkg managers.

As I understand it all 3 of these, apt-get, aptitude & synaptic are just front ends for the main pkg system which is apt. Is that right?

I'm actually leaning more towards aptitude in spite of its picky attitude cause it seems to show much more detailed information. That's good, if it can be believed. Could the differences I'm seeing be attributed to different functionality built into the 3 programs, instead of one of their databases being messed up or out of date? I'm guessing they all use the same database but I'm not sure. For instance a search for broken programs in synaptic comes up with nothing. A search in aptitude comes up with 'cupsys-bsd is broken cause it conflicts with lpr' (as far as I can tell, lpr isn't installed). The only thing I could find with apt-get was 'apt-get check' which comes up with nothing.

This is bugging me to the extent I've put my nonprinting problem on the back burner (that's what started all this). I think what I'll do is let aptitude delete all that stuff. then install them one by one with aptitude & check what apt-get & synaptic have to say about each install b4 I do the next one.

Yes, dpkg is the main package system.

followup:

I finally got my printer going after purging & reinstalling the print server pkg with aptitude.

After reading up on the dpkg front ends & learning aptitude a little better I'm starting to appreciate the very detailed info you can see with the aptitude interface. Well worth the hour or so it takes to read the doc & learn it. Think I'll use it from now on, at least for installing/removing programs.

Would rec anyone looking for a pkg mgr to look at it, esp newbies.

Lol, nice to know you completely changed your mind about the "Newbies: BEWARE" thing!

J_K9

I have been having problems similar to those of the OP. I did a fairly straightforward install of Sarge with the first 2 CDs (when it was still testing) and have added a bunch of packages since from the Internet via 'apt-get install'. Whenever I try to run aptitude, though, it wants to remove dozens of packages, many of which work fine, so I simply abort.

If you are using Testing and/or Unstable repositories, you will run into the dependencies/broken packages issue. Apps tend to have conflicts quite often in unstable.

I really haven't found much of a difference between the various front ends, apt, aptitude, synaptic. I personally like using Synaptic because it is easier to search or just browse through packages until I find something I want to install.

For updates aptitude is the recommended method.

If you install programs or updates with apt, then aptitude, and I believe synaptic, do not know about it. The three do not talk to each other. I ran aptitude, and it wanted to remove all of the programs that I had installed with apt. This is not a big deal. As long as you know that you installed a program (java for instance) with apt, and it runs good, who cares what aptitude says.
All three programs have their pros and cons. I use apt exclusively because I like it. It doesn't always install recommended packages like aptitude will, so I have to go back install them separately with apt. But to say that apt is stupid because aptitude doesn't track what apt does is misleading to noobs, and not fair to apt. I cut my teeth on apt, never using anything but apt the first six months I was learning linux. It has never failed me. I did, however, study the APT-Howto religiously until I knew how to use it. I also installed listbugs and review every warning it gives me.

I use mostly apt, and like Tons of Fun said, aptitude gets confused about the stuff I installed with apt. Synaptic, however, seems to be on the same page as apt; I get no errors from synaptic when I use it interchangeably with apt. Neither apt nor synaptic installs recommended packages by default, AFAIK.

Aptitude is a little more sophisticated in its package management than apt-get, and keeps track of which packages were installed automatically and which were explicitly requested by the user. This means that it can remove unused packages and keep the system as tidy as possible
Mixing your upgrades between aptitude and apt-get will confuse aptitude....it wont get confused if you always use it.Also make sure you have the options set right.You dont have to have aptitude remove rarely used programs if you don't want.
Aptitude has the same command line options as apt-get....with a few monitoring options.
You can use multiple sources as well.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.
Also aptitude logs its actions.



from "9 reasons to use aptitude";
*
1. aptitude can look just like apt-get
2. aptitude tracks automatically installed packages
3. aptitude sanely handles recommends
4. use aptitude as a normal user and avoid hosing your system
5. aptitude has a powerful UI and searching capabilities
6. aptitude makes it easy to keep track of obsolete software
7. aptitude has an interface to the Debian task system
8. aptitude supports multiple sources
9. aptitude logs its actions
* The real reason:
10. you can play minesweeper if you get bored/frustrated!

http://www.luv.asn.au/overheads/apti...ude-intro.html

Just remember if you use aptitude get rid of synaptics and dont use apt-get.
If you need to force a pakage you can do so with aptitude -f just like apt-get.
Knowing how aptitude works will actually make things easier for you.