Tasksel: changing usage

Garda · 07-09-2012, 07:37 AM

If I change what I am using a computer for, or if I selected the wrong options during install, is it better to run tasksel and tick different options, or to use apt-get and add/remove packages manually?

For example, if I want to run a web server on my computer, but I didn't select that during install, should I just apt-get install httpd, or use tasksel?

Dutch Master · 07-09-2012, 05:31 PM

There is no httpd package. You could use the tasksel method, it's perfectly safe. But it does introduce quite some overhead in the form of unneeded packages, a situation that can/will lead to problems if there's only limited space available. Better to install a few core packages that introduce the functionality you want, the .deb package management is smart enough to automagically install any dependencies. Aptitude is a more convenient way of doing this over apt-get