[lug] Daily system crash....

[Nate Duehr]

On Jan 28, 2008, at 8:06 PM, David L. Anselmi wrote:

> I keep telling people that aptitude is the killer app in package  
> management.  All packages that I specifically care about are marked  
> "installed by me".  All others are marked "installed due to  
> dependencies".  Then removing packages and all their depends is easy.
>
> Now you're all crossing your eyes and wondering what language I'm  
> speaking.

Not me.  I'm a "true believer" and have been since long before RedHat  
had yum, etc... the dpkg/apt/aptitude chain just rocks the planet.   
Yum and RedHat Network and all that stuff has NEVER caught up to what  
the dpkg/apt tools could ALWAYS do from Day 1.  Something to be said  
for THINKING about the design instead of implementing it first and  
then having to hack other things on later...

(Now the iterative coders doing the trendy team coding and all that  
"small tight code loops" thing are going to start throwing tomatoes at  
me, but I really think that time spent DESIGNING up front, is better  
time spent than coding crud and having to remove the cruft later...  
but I also don't code for a living, so... my opinion is based solely  
on the apparent end-results, and not the work that needs to Just Get  
Done that coders live with every day and try to manage.)

Aptitude has none of that silly GUI business either, so can even be  
done from a mobile phone or whatever, if you're lucky enough to have  
some kind of mobile SSH client... hahaha... if you're in a panic to  
update a security patch or something.

But for those that love GUI's I hear Synaptic is pretty good too, and  
have used it on occasion on Ubuntu, because it's already just kinda  
sitting there staring at me from the menus... daring me to use it.   
(Be forewarned, Synaptic and aptitude treat some dependency levels  
differently and if you use them together, they may get into fights  
over that other "not installed by you" stuff... but it's usually a  
pretty tame fight, with whoever ran last, winning each time.  LOL!)   
Heh heh.

Good stuff, no matter how you slice it.  And the control files are  
easier to read and deal with than RPM's too, if you ask me.  .spec  
files are a giant PITA compared to just looking in the dpkg control  
files to see what's going on if you have "package weirdness" going on.

Just my boring Debian-centric opinion.  (BIG GRIN)

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com