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File under 'disturbing': Debian Wheezy doesn't ship with the Synaptic Package Manager

Posted by Steven_Rosenber on · 16 comments
Steven Rosenberg on frugal technology, simple living and guerrilla large-appliance repair
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My current Debian Wheezy installation is an upgrade from Squeeze, so I was unprepared for what just happened: I'm doing a bunch of installs in between my other work, and I just got around to a traditional Wheezy desktop installation with the GNOME desktop using netinstall image. I was unprepared for the only GUI package manager to be GNOME Package Kit. No Synaptic Package Manager. Not even the "Sofware Center" ported from Ubuntu that shipped in Squeeze.

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Comments (16)

Synaptic and Software-Center are available, if you want them
I just find it curious and more than a little bit wrong.
I'm still trying to figure out whether I am supposed to be using aptitude or apt-get.

But it does seem odd to not include synaptic, for when wants to use a graphical interface, with a little more sophistication/a little more informative than an app store.
Quoting:I'm still trying to figure out whether I am supposed to be using aptitude or apt-get


K/Ubuntu no longer have Aptitude installed by default, but I got used to it so I install it whenever I do new installs.

Aptitude is more sophisticated than get-apt and has more options. A special one is safe-upgrade vs full-upgrade. It makes sure to install only apps that have no unresolved dependencies and the other suggests options to resolve them by removing/upgrade others.

They both are dependent on and require dpkg.

@Fettoosh

Thanks.

Ever since I saw (somewhere while doing a Debian install) that Apt-get was being/had been depreciated in favour of Aptitude, I've been using both (according to whim, as they are supposed to be compatible). But I haven't been clear why, aside from the claim that Aptitude handles upgrades better.
My experiences with Aptitude have not been good, as it hangs on upgrades in an endless dependency calculation loop. I use Synaptic and apt-get interchangeably and never have problems.
I'm a dinosaur, I still use dselect, or apt-get for the command line. Depreciating apt-get would surprise me greatly.

Aptitude also did not thrill me. It didn't seem to add any functionality that I would use.
Quoting:My experiences with Aptitude have not been good, as it hangs on upgrades in an endless dependency calculation loop.


The is the idea behind Aptitude, it is supposed to be very stringent to make sure apps don't break. I rarely encountered such a case and when I did, I just used full-upgrade, which resolved the issue.

Quoting:It didn't seem to add any functionality that I would use.


Most people don't use the additional options in Aptitude, but I personally find its syntax friendlier and more English less cryptic than apt-get.

Aptitude has come in handy for me a few times when apt-get was stopped by some kind of dependency conflict. That doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, it's nice to have Aptitude around.
My apps don't break with Synaptic and apt-get, so waiting overnight or longer for Aptitude to make up its mind isn't an attractive option.
I've never run into that issue of Aptitude taking a long time to decipher dependencies. I don't use it all that much (or at least not that much for things that wouldn't work just as well with apt-get), so maybe I just haven't used it enough to see the issue.
Quoting:so waiting overnight or longer for Aptitude to make up its mind isn't an attractive option.


@TC,

What do you have installed on your machine, the whole 30,000 something FOSS apps? :-)

Almost, Fettoosh! I'm always installing and removing apps for testing, howtos, and reviews. In the olden days that meant dealing with dependency problems on a regular basis, but in these here modern times broken dependencies are rare. It's pretty amazing because I pull from all kinds of official and unofficial repos, different distros, various release versions, and some manual installations. It's a mess. And it works. I just dist-upgraded from Linux Mint 12 to 13, which Clem think is bad idea because he prefers clean new installations over dist-upgrades. There was one little dependency glitch which took a minute to clean up. Now I have shiny new Mint 13 with XFCE 4.10. Life is good.
Have to admit I have never done a dist upgrade ever, always clean install for me since it is so easy with Linux as long as you have a /home partition.
"but in these here modern times broken dependencies are rare."

Since the xFree86/Xorg transition, the only problem I've run into is that Trinity is compiled for Debian Stable, and I want to run Unstable, so I have to be careful not to accidentally uninstall Trinity while updating Sid.

"I have never done a dist upgrade ever"

Since you're accustomed to backing-up in preparation for a clean install, why not do your backups and then try editing your /etc/apt/sources.list and "apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade" and see how it goes?

Worst possible outcome would be to have to wipe it and start over, which you're planning to do anyway.
Quoting:always clean install for me since it is so easy with Linux as long as you have a /home partition.


The last time I did a clean install was when Kubuntu 8.04 was released. It has been Distro-upgrade since. There has been a number of hiccups but nothing that couldn't be resolved. Since 10.04, I hardly have any issues.

I also have separate /home partition (doesn't/shouldn't everyone!). But It is easier to Distro-Upgrade since I don't have to re-install all other applications that aren't included in the ISO file by default.

Even for new machines, I recently put together (with help from Internet) this procedure to clone disk over local network

+=========================
Boot both machines with USB drives
make sure both machines have networking working
Determine IP of Destination : 192.168.123.ddd (3 in this case)

9000 is a random available port # DO NOT CONFUSE WHICH Machine is Source & which is Target/Destination. VERY IMPORTANT to make sure to type appropriate command on each machine. DO TYPE THE FOLLOWING FIRST on DESTINATION/TARGET machine (Receiving disk) to start listening

sudo su nc -l 9000 | dd of=/dev/sda bs=16M

DO TYPE THE FOLLOWING SECOND on SOURCE machine (ORIGINAL Sending disk) to start sending to clone

sudo su dd if=/dev/sda bs=16M | nc 192.168.123.3 9000

It does take a while (compared to local cloning) but doesn't need attention. Direct connection between the two machines using cross-cable helps quite a lot in improving performance. +=========================

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