> Heather <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > btw, I really enjoy using console-apt most because it doesn't just *do* the > > load, it shows you what dependencies it had to tag first. This gives me > > a nice chance to do stuff in small bursts most of the time, rather than > > trust dist-upgrade ... which I do use, but only rarely. > > I had a bad experience with console-apt the first time I used it, but maybe > I should give it another try some time. But I like aptitude, because it > doesn't do *anything* automatically - you have to select all the > dependencies yourself. Which is great if you're really paranoid, or you > like getting your hands dirty. > > Hubert
This isn't a terribly laptop-ish subject anymore, if in fact, it ever was. Ob laptop: I sometimes make myself popular at installfests by having a local mirror of Potato on my laptop, setup for http: transmission. Installfests often have a local hub but no internet connection. console-apt makes it much easier for newbies to use Debian's product descriptions and learn a bit, while picking what they want and not getting too freaked about the scary ol' bash prompt. If you last used it before about February or so (maybe earlier...) its interface has changed immensely, and is a lot more like aptitude now. It even has real menus. Avoiding *having* to tag all the deps myself was why I switched to debian in the first place. But capt, at least in its present state, does not actually begin the download without having you confirm... you have a chance to bail on evil selections. For example, carefully picking things from woody that won't provoke a libc change. I have a few wishes about capt - I wish they'd left the description the old way when they added all the features, since it was *much* easier to read longer descriptions before. (I would accept it if descriptions popped up that way only when you have descriptions off, and ask for the description on one thing. But right now it only has a mode toggle.) If it encounters glitches that would cause apt-get to spout some interesting comment and maybe prompt, I wish it would give me the same commentary and prompt, rather than bail (ungracefully to the shell, in some cases). OTOH I like that much better than it just doing the default thing (probably just what I didn't want). And if I'm sure if I gave myself a bit of free time (ha!) I'd figure out where to set its colors, and change them. But it sure beats the crap out of memorizing the availables list. * Heather Stern * star@ many places...
