John Oliver wrote: > I'm trying to use the Debian installer CD. This "aptitude" is the > *worst* installer I've ever seen... reminds me of DOS apps from 10 years > ago.
Aptitude is not really an installer.... It is a package manager. You have other choices in package managers, also. You can use the time-tested dselect, you can use the synaptic package manager, you can use apt-get directly, or you can say stuff it all, and use dpkg directly. Up to you, really. > I want to tell it to *not* install 20 million things. But, if I hit > enter on a package to find out what it is, I can't get back to the list > of all packages... I'm having to hit reset and start all over again. > There's nothing in Help that helps. Did you hit ``q'' to close the current screen? Not the most intiutice way around aptitude, I agree. Also, my aptitude (woody) may be older than yours (I'm guessing sarge) and some interface issues may be different. > Is there any way to tell it "Do not install Gnome. If other packages > depend on Gnome packages, then don't install them, either. If more > packages depend on them... well, you get the idea"? I want a small, > simple, clean, basic install. This machine just doesn't have the disk > space for every bloated office app in creation. Yes, do not select ``desktop'' If you select any package that needs Gnome, aptitude, dselect, aynaptic, and apt-get will each assume that you want the required Gnome libs, and will happily prepare to download and install them. Only dpkg will not. However, dpkg will complain that the requested package that you already downloaded (via wget, or some other mechanism) cannot be installed due to missing dependencies. It is then up to you to either add said packages, remove the previously attempted-to-install package, or allow one of the other tools (apt-get, aptitide, dselect, or synaptic) to get the requireed dependencies for you. You can have has much control as you want, or relinquish as much as you want. It is, really, up to you. -john Reminds me, I really should do a test-install sarge sometime soon. -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
