Which package manager?
Submitted by root on Fri 9 Mar 2007
| adept-manager |
   1% | 21 votes |
| apt-get |
57% | 614 votes |
| aptitude |
26% | 285 votes |
| gnome-apt |
0% | 1 vote |
| synaptic |
10% | 113 votes |
| wajig? |
0% | 5 votes |
| Something else? |
2% | 30 votes |
| Total 1069 votes |
dselect
Started with dselect a long time ago, and never really used aptitude..
I use apt-get now and then but just for small packages.
[ Parent ]
I accept that aptitude is a tad slower than apt-get but I can't see that on my AMD64 boxes. I believe that aptitude manages things better than apt-get and I have found it deals with complex packages better than apt-get.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent ]
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Possibly. I've heard this opinion from many, however:
Shouldn't there be just one, canonical way of 'managing things' in Debian? Why is that there exist many different ways of 'managing things'? That's a design disaster.
[ Parent ]
Users have to have the choice! However, aptitude should be the preferred package manager since Sarge release (see release notes).
As or the poll, I have been using exclusively aptitude since I have learned it can remove packages installed as dependencies, which helps me keep my systems as clean as possible.
Cheers,
Julien
[ Parent ]
In Debian old tools are maintained and continue to support users familiar with them. Rather than abandon apt-get in favour of aptitude in one fell swoop, both are available side by side, until everyone is happy that the new tool is actually better than the old one.
As Debian isn't an "one tool only distro", it is likely that older tools will continue to be supported and available as long as people are happy to put the work in.
I agree it's sometimes confusing to know which tool to use but with Debian you get a choice the same can't be said for others. Choice is a double edged sword we just have to be careful what we do...
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent ]
I don't know about a canonical way of doing things. I prefer synaptic for my home box and work computer, but strictly use aptitude on my servers.
[ Parent ]
[ Parent ]
In fact, it's telling that the user who submitted the poll ("root") didn't even include it among the choices. I can say that I wouldn't have even thought to include it.
dselect may be a good tool, but due to lacking quality docs, I think most prospective users have simply ignored it over the years.
I've been using apt since first touching a Debian box. Just figured it was the standard package manager and never dug into any of the alternatives. Not sure why I'd want to use aptitude, since apt-get and apt-cache work fine.
[ Parent ]
[ Send Message | View Steve's Scratchpad | View Weblogs ]
This poll was derived from a user-submitted one, I added three/four additional choices and utterly forgot to add dselect.
My last memory of using it was pre-woody, during my first install of Debian!
[ Parent ]
I use aptitude simply because I read good things about it and it (*knock on wood*) has worked quite well so far.
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a small tip: from time to time i have to SIGKILL the aptitude process (unstable testing box) and if i re-run aptitude, it refuses to go on untill i reconfigure all packages. i discovered that running dselect after such a crash handles the unexpected error without any problem :-) and does not force me to reconfigure everything -- so i use both.
m.
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On the other hand, on a desktop I use synaptic and I find it clear with not much eye-candy.
e-Ric
[ Parent ]
synaptic - I suppose - is for those who never use or don't want to use the console :(
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I like the searching capability of Synaptic.
Aptitude is harder to use than Dselect for searching.
I do not recall seeing the auto dependency stuff in Synaptic.
Is there a way to make "remove unused dependencies", 'purge' instead?
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aaron
You don't understand my words...but you must choose.
- Shogun Assassin
[ Parent ]
--------
Felipe Sateler
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-Tom
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Like many, I'm still using dselect, and have no reason to change.
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