Having used 'smart --gui' from the day it became available on SuSE,
I find it sometimes cumbersome - but definitely usable.
> I hover over several toolbar icons, and get no tooltips to tell
> me what they're for.
Tooltips are shown only if the icon is "active" -- that is, they are
shown if clicking on the icon would cause smart to perform the
indicated action. Presumably this is to not mislead the user into
believing that tool to be currently available to him (this is how
smart indicates that all the pre-conditions for use of that specific
tool have not yet been provided).
> I open it up and it says on the statusbar "No interesting
upgrades > available!"
That's interesting - for me when I first "open it up" the statusbar
is blank. Are you sure that you didn't happen to click on the
next-to-rightmost icon ('Upgrade all packages') in the toolbar? The
message you quote is put into the statusbar when smart's 'Upgrade
all packages' action decides it currently knows of no packages
meeting its "upgrade this" criteria.
[Unfortunately, a human-factors failing of 'smart --gui' is that
when another action is performed (e.g., another toolbar icon is
clicked on), the previous content of the statusbar is not blanked.
So the "No interesting upgrades available" message may stay there,
beyond the time when it was meaningful.]
> ... while providing no apparent way to find out what
> non-interesting upgrades might be available
This is something that smart *can* provide. [I have not figured out
how to get synaptic to give me equivalent information.]
Go to the menu bar, click on 'View', mark 'Hide old'; go to the menu
bar, click on 'View', click on 'Expand All'. This will show all the
packages found by the most recent 'Update' which have been added to
the active repositories since the previous 'Update' was run. This
list includes "new" packages which would not meet smart's "upgrade
this" criteria.
> It has an icon for updating all packages, but none for updating
installed packages.
The leftmost toolbar icon ('Update channels') causes the indexes of
the active repositories to be read. This "updates" the information
smart has about "all packages" available at these depositories.
The next-to-rightmost toolbar icon ('Upgrade all packages') will
function (if confirmed) to mark (i.e., "select for upgrade"), from
among the packages whose info was previously fetched by 'Update',
those packages which meet smart's "upgrade this" criteria.
[Optionally, the 'Apply' can be performed directly from 'Upgrade'.]
The next-to-leftmost toolbar icon ("Apply marked changes') will
perform (if confirmed) the actual "upgrade" (or whatever action had
been marked) of all packages currently marked.
It has no menu item for configuration or preferences.
True. Some things [for instance, which "channels" (i.e.,
repositories) will be looked at when 'Update' is run) are settable
from the Edit menu.
Information about advanced configuration parameters can be found at
http://wiki.suselinuxsupport.de/wikka.php?wakka=smartconfig
mikus
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