Hey, Joe.

On Friday 04 January 2008, Joe Apuzzo wrote:
> > aptitude
> >    text-based package manager that allows for downgrading packages.
>
> This program is so horrible that I had/have a mental block when it come
> to it.  Synaptic is the GUI version of aptitude they are twins yes, but 
> aptitude is nearly impossible to use. 

   Yeah, when I switched from dselect I had similar feelings about it (it's 
long enough ago that I had forgotten about that).  Aptitude does take a while 
to get used to and it is a little frustrating to begin with.  Eventually it 
actually becomes FUN to use, but I think it took me at least a week of using 
every day before I got there.  It also works well over ssh, and deals with 
on-the-fly terminal window resizing.
   Synaptic is a lot easier to learn, but like you said the downside is that 
there are times when X isn't available.  Other than that one thing Synaptic 
seems very well worked out and most people seem to enjoy using it, so I think 
it's the right recommendation.

> I wish there was a real command line way of forcing a package back. Since
> a 'force' will keep the correct libraries and depends in alignment.

   I'll have a look, and if I find a way of doing it I'll post it to the 
list -- it's something I want, too.

> > checkinstall
>
> This looks like a good addition, but it's deep. I think that I should
> split off the "building from source" into it's own 2 hour talk. Giving
> it it's due and adding how to package deb and rpm files ( yes you can
> make rpm files on Ubuntu )

   Yeah, there's a lot to building from source.  There always seems to be more 
to learn about building /packages/ from source.



> Another thing that I missed is "alien" which gives you the ability to
> convert other systems packages like RPM to DEB format!

   Yes, very handy.  Developers and commercial software vendors often pick 
certain distributions to support and may not support your particular distro 
of choice, so this can come in handy for times like that.  It can be a little 
weird, though, because sometimes the versions of libraries used between 
distributions don't match, so I find that a "static binary" from the software 
vendor works best, if there is one.

> I will most likely give the talk again to the New York Ubuntu group via
> VoIP and distributed VNC so keep tuned.

   Huh.  Distributed VNC.  Interesting!

   -- Chris

-- 

Chris Knadle
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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