On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 13:15:23 +0000, thveillon.debian (thveillon.deb...@googlemail.com) wrote:
> Hi, just sharing a user experience with aptitude, which I use. You do > have a point about apparent simplicity regarding apt-get, most of the > time it just seems to "work", period. It is all the more true since many > users just see it through a gui, and synaptic is a nice tool. > > But when running a system which is a mix of testing, sid and > experimental, plus a few debian-multimedia goodies thrown in, aptitude > performs better. In this situation I am really happy that aptitude is > showing me the nuts and bolts of the tricky dependencies resolutions, > giving me the opportunity to take the final decision (wrecking my system > or not ;-) ). I don't consider it's "verbosity" as being a problem. > In the same situation apt-get often just can't get through, and leaves > me with dpkg to manually install a few packages before apt-get works > again. Off course I am *not* overlooking the possibility that I am just > too dumb to get apt-get to work, but then the simplicity argument just > drops. > > The main drawback I find in aptitude is the learning curve, to simply > use the cli search function in an efficient way the user has to go > through a lot of fine manual pages, with non idiot friendly patterns and > regex to remember. But at least it is still aptitude options when apt > would require the use of additional tools (like apt-cache). The ncurse > interface is a bit better, but lacks user-friendliness in many aspects. > I thing aptitude will effectively become the popular choice when > aptitude-gtk is ready, giving a lot of flexibility to the user from the > cli to the full-blown gui. I was half way through composing a reply to this thread, so very similar to the above from Tom, but definitely not as well written, that it seems easier to say "me too". Aptitude from the command line gives so much control that, IMHO of course, it really is worth the effort to learn at least some of the less obvious search patterns and qualifiers. > Just my humble user experience. > > Tom -- Bob Cox. Stoke Gifford, near Bristol, UK. Please reply to the list only. Do NOT send copies directly to me. Debian on the NSLU2: http://bobcox.com/slug/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
