apt-get vs aptitude

[sourceninja]

I had a recent incursion into the debian/ubuntu realm while setting up a new box. I'm a gentoo guy myself, so I did a bit of reading before going with debian for my friends new machine. I found tons of references saying that you should use aptitude instead of apt-get. First, it has a ncurses gui if you need it, second it has better dependancy tracking/checking.

It can be used as a text based gui by just typing aptitude or you can use it just like apt-get with aptitude update or aptitude install package, etc.

I was wondering is this the best way to install. Is it really better then apt and should it be pushed for those linux users who use ubuntu/debian?

 

[cleverhandle]

I've never really tried aptitude yet - I'm a dselect man myself. Yeah, it's ugly and arcane, but now that I've learned it I find it really comfortable for most package management. I only use apt-get when either I already know the exact package I need or if I'm pulling from testing/unstable onto a stable box and don't want to download anything that's not a direct dependency.

But aptitude sounds OK and all...

 

[AmigaMan]

bah, just use Synaptic...

<--- runs and screams away from all of the cmdline hackers furiously cursing me for suggesting a GUI 😉

 

[Nothinman]

I used to use dselect, but since it's been marked deprecated I decided to force myself to use aptitude. It's funny because the people who love aptitude say how much easier it is compared to dselect, but I never saw it. It's virtually the same thing only with different keybindings.

Anyway, yes aptitude does a few extra things that dselect and apt-get won't. The most significant is that it records packages pulled in automatically as dependencies and will remove them when nothing left on the system depends on them, it's a good way to keep your system clean without lots of manual pruning.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
I used to use dselect, but since it's been marked deprecated...

Oh noes!!!

...I decided to force myself to use aptitude. It's funny because the people who love aptitude say how much easier it is compared to dselect, but I never saw it. It's virtually the same thing only with different keybindings.

Well, admittedly some of the dselect keybindings are really pretty strange. The only one besides install/hold/remove/purge that I know is "X" - if things look really messy, then I know to X out and try to find a simpler subset of what I'm doing first.

Anyway, yes aptitude does a few extra things that dselect and apt-get won't. The most significant is that it records packages pulled in automatically as dependencies and will remove them when nothing left on the system depends on them, it's a good way to keep your system clean without lots of manual pruning.

Hmm... clever, but I'm not sure I like that. How does it know that I'm not using those packages in something I've compiled myself? Admittedly, there's not much I compile myself in Debian, but every now and then there's something. Presumably it at least asks you before it goes about housecleaning?

 

[Nothinman]

Well, admittedly some of the dselect keybindings are really pretty strange. The only one besides install/hold/remove/purge that I know is "X" - if things look really messy, then I know to X out and try to find a simpler subset of what I'm doing first.

But aptitude isn't exactly an improvement, 'g' to install? I assume they were thinking 'go' or something, but just hitting Enter in dselect makes more sense to me. And the stupid window thing aptitude tries to emulate is just annoying.

Hmm... clever, but I'm not sure I like that. How does it know that I'm not using those packages in something I've compiled myself? Admittedly, there's not much I compile myself in Debian, but every now and then there's something. Presumably it at least asks you before it goes about housecleaning?

If you want the package installed anyway just mark it to be installed, it'll remove the 'auto' tag and won't remove it unless you explicitly ask it to later. One thing I did recently was went through and marked as many of the packages I have installed as auto, marking only what I really want installed as implicitly installed. Surprisingly there wasn't too much cruft to be removed.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
But aptitude isn't exactly an improvement, 'g' to install? I assume they were thinking 'go' or something, but just hitting Enter in dselect makes more sense to me. And the stupid window thing aptitude tries to emulate is just annoying.

Hmm... I tried it. I don't like it. It's definitely no more intuitive than dselect. Do I understand from the fabulous mc-style menus that F7 is the key you need to get back to the main screen after you've drilled down to view the package details? That's intuitive. Hmm... or does "q" do the same thing? (I'd expect it to exit the program entirely). I guess stuff is at least better labelled and more menu-accessible than dselect, but it still doesn't seem worth learning.

If you want the package installed anyway just mark it to be installed, it'll remove the 'auto' tag and won't remove it unless you explicitly ask it to later.

OK, sounds reasonable enough.

 

[Nothinman]

Hmm... or does "q" do the same thing? (I'd expect it to exit the program entirely). I guess stuff is at least better labelled and more menu-accessible than dselect, but it still doesn't seem worth learning.

Q closes a window, if it's the last window it exits the app.

 

[nweaver]

as a non dselect users (never tried it) I can tell you aptitude is not very intuitive, no matter. what.

 

[sourceninja]

I definatly dont like the interface on aptitidue, i'm not a fan of text based gui interfaces (except menuconfig, i like that one). I usually just use it like aptitude install crap. I normally already know what I want to install. But do you think its worth it to reinforce the use of aptitude on the command line over apt for new users? Or is telling them apt-get install crap good enough?

 

[Nothinman]

One other nice thing about aptitude/dselect is that they tell you about new packages. I don't mean new versions, I mean totally new packages. AFAIK there's no way to get an equivalent list in apt. Obviously that doesn't mean much if you're using stable because no new packages will ever be there, but for those using testing and unstable it's really nice to see what's new in the archive.

But do you think its worth it to reinforce the use of aptitude on the command line over apt for new users? Or is telling them apt-get install crap good enough?

You probably want to reinforce the use of synaptic for new users, running either aptitude or apt-get will probably be scarey for them.

 

[sourceninja]

well, a lot of the time people use guides or people tell them to just type in apt-get blah.

I know that for normal use synaptic is best. But if you want someone to install a bunch of apps, its easier to say here paste this in a console. Or if you are writting a guide its easier to say copy and paste this in a console, then walk someone though finding something in a gui.

Plus not everyone has a gui. Lets say they are using debian and are installing a gui. Is it better to aptititude or does it really not matter?

 

[Nothinman]

I would say aptitude, so that when packages are renamed, upgraded, etc it will know it's ok to remove old libs and such because they were installed automatically and nothing depends on them.

 

[DidlySquat]

errrr....WTF ? Isn't aptitude just an interface over APT ? apt-get is a complete command line tool to manage packages, archives, cache, and dependency resolution. Aptitude and synaptic are GUI tools which use apt-get. Of course aptitude is a text-based (curses) interface, not an X application, but it's still not really a command line tool (although I heard you could use it as such). Many times it's easier (and faster) for HOWTO guides to just give a list of commands instead of explaining how to work with a GUI app (e.g. click the button above and to the left, and then type blah in the dialog box, etc). In any case, if you want to use the command line, apt-get is all that you want, but if you want to use GUI, synaptic/kynaptic are far superior to aptitude. Just about the only situation aptitude is useful is if you don't have X-windows running (e.g. you boot in recovery mode), and you want to browse and manage packages, but aren't familiar with all the apt-get command line options. In that case it's easier to fire up aptitude to do the required maintenance.

In summary I would say that as a command line tool aptitude is redundant because it adds no value to the functionality available from apt-get, and as a GUI app it's inferior to synaptic.

 

[sourceninja]

Originally posted by: DidlySquat
errrr....WTF ? Isn't aptitude just an interface over APT ? apt-get is a complete command line tool to manage packages, archives, cache, and dependency resolution. Aptitude and synaptic are GUI tools which use apt-get. Of course aptitude is a text-based (curses) interface, not an X application, but it's still not really a command line tool (although I heard you could use it as such). Many times it's easier (and faster) for HOWTO guides to just give a list of commands instead of explaining how to work with a GUI app (e.g. click the button above and to the left, and then type blah in the dialog box, etc). In any case, if you want to use the command line, apt-get is all that you want, but if you want to use GUI, synaptic/kynaptic are far superior to aptitude. Just about the only situation aptitude is useful is if you don't have X-windows running (e.g. you boot in recovery mode), and you want to browse and manage packages, but aren't familiar with all the apt-get command line options. In that case it's easier to fire up aptitude to do the required maintenance.

In summary I would say that as a command line tool aptitude is redundant because it adds no value to the functionality available from apt-get, and as a GUI app it's inferior to synaptic.

From what I understand as Nothingman said aptitude tracks packages and automatically uninstalls dependancys and other things that apt-get doesn't take care of for you. After asking on a few boards and reading, I've decided to give all commands to people with aptitude for command line and synaptic for gui. It doesn't make their life any harder to type aptitude install package name vs apt-get. And it can't hurt any to use it. And if it really does handle dependancys better, then thats cool.

 

[Nothinman]

Isn't aptitude just an interface over APT ?

It's that and more, as I mentioned above.

Of course aptitude is a text-based (curses) interface, not an X application, but it's still not really a command line tool (although I heard you could use it as such)

Yes, it supports many of the same options as apt, i.e. 'aptitude install vim' or 'aptitude purge kde'.

In summary I would say that as a command line tool aptitude is redundant because it adds no value to the functionality available from apt-get, and as a GUI app it's inferior to synaptic.

In summary I would say that you never looked into what aptitude (I don't know about synaptic) can do and shouldn't be ranting about things that you don't know about.

 

[DidlySquat]

Originally posted by: nweaver
as a non dselect users (never tried it) I can tell you aptitude is not very intuitive, no matter. what.

tru dat ! synaptic is 10X better and more intuitive.

The auto-cleaning of un-needed dependencies is nice though