On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 04:36:26AM +0000, hellekin wrote: [cut]
> > But aptitude is far from a great GUI. I'm confused between apt, > apt-get, aptitude, dpkg, apt-cache, etc. That's a lot of complicated > programs with divergent interfaces that overlap a lot. I'd like a > simple interface to the system packages that doesn't require looking at > the manual or waiting 10 years to master. > But apt is not "a lot of complicated programs" at all. I am confident that in more than 99.6% of the times a "normal" Debian/Devuan user will need to invoke just two commands (apt-cache and apt-get), in one of these five fashions: - apt-cache search [PATTERN] (this searches for PATTERN in package names and descriptions) - apt-get install [PACKAGE-NAME] (well...) - apt-get remove [PACKAGE-NAME] (...) - apt-get update (update the list of packages from the repo) - apt-get upgrade (upgrade your system installing the last available version of each of them) And both apt-cache and apt-get (as all the other tools in apt-utils) have the same interface: <command> <function> [options] <params> That's it. No diverging interfaces. No overlaps. No need to wait 10 years to "master" them. Just two commands, with function names spelt in current english (I believe there was even a project, back in the days, to localise the names of apt functions...) If you have bash_completion enabled, "apt-get install" and "apt-get remove" are a nobrainer. If you stay with the same (stable) release and don't mix-up repos from different releases, you will never ever have a single reason to use dpkg. If you like to mess-up with different repos, aptitude will not save you anyway, and you have to revert to dpkg. It's true that apt-get has thousands of options, and you might need apt-file if you are looking for the package that provides a specific file, but those account for the <0.4% of the remaining use cases. Actually, I have never ever had to use dpkg directly to fix problems in official packages, despite having used almost exclusively Debian testing. So in my case that 0.4% accounts just for the occasional calls to apt-file, and to "apt-get dist-upgrade", but the last ones become very rare if you remain in a stable branch. If there is something I have learnt using unix systems is that things look complicated and hard only until you don't know them :) HND KatolaZ -- [ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ --- GLUG Catania -- Freaknet Medialab ] [ me [at] katolaz.homeunix.net -- http://katolaz.homeunix.net -- ] [ GNU/Linux User:#325780/ICQ UIN: #258332181/GPG key ID 0B5F062F ] [ Fingerprint: 8E59 D6AA 445E FDB4 A153 3D5A 5F20 B3AE 0B5F 062F ] _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list [email protected] https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
