The evolution of a Linux user

gus3,

Individuals can learn and alter behavior.

At least some can. (I'm still trying)

Individuals can evolve -

Case in point: Vic Ferrari/Latka said something along the lines of "Hey, I thought I had a right to evolve, but I'm sensing a lot of hostility here!"

And if a Linux-user can't evolve, at least they can emerge.

And they're so tender when they do. Yum!

Evolution means change, so in fact Linux users can evolve, at least I think Linux users can change.

Change user, of course we can.

isn't that switch user?

To get serious, humans have not evolved much, if at all, since the neolithic.

The evolution of _ideas_ has surpassed any possible speed of physical evolution.

We have no claws, no fur, no big teeth, yet we are masters of this world because we have the most effective weapons of all: Learning, imagination, forward planning.

Debian users don't evolve, we dist-upgrade.

Quoting:we dist-upgrade

With aptitude! ;)

aptly put!

very punny, guys

I cannot get aptitude or any of the other "higher" level tools to work for me as well as dselect does.

I'm told over and over to use something "better" than dselect, but if it doesn't work is it really "better"?

I also note that the Sound Blaster CD-ROM connected through the sound card that I had in my first Linux PC in 1995 is still supported.

Linux! Where dinosaurs yet live!

But how can you select packages with deselect?

FWIW I don't get the purpose of aptitude. apt-get works for me.

dselect is just a curses-based package management tool. Search, select, delete, etc. Just like all the rest. I cannot tell you it works better for me than anything else.

Quoting:I don't get the purpose of aptitude.

Simple. Automatic *removal* of dependencies you no longer need. That makes it oh so much easier to keep your system clean. Especially if you install lots of software just to try it out and remove it afterwards.

I never use aptitude in curses though. Only as a CLI command, just like you use apt-get.

Note that automated dependency removal only works if you install the software with aptitude to begin with. So it's not much use to me on a system that was maintained with apt-get.

@sander - thanks for the explanation. I still have much to learn about the debian packaging world.

apt-get autoremove

Works for me.

Quoting:apt-get autoremove

Works for me.

Exactly. This is not a unique future of aptitude anymore :) For me it's better dependency resolution and, most of all, much better dependency conflict resolution, including an interactive mode where I can browse the possible solutions and/or skip it and make my own. I too use aptitude mostly from the command line but the interactive mode is very useful for many, many things.

I tried interactive mode a few times but it utterly confuses me, especially when there's a conflict that needs to be resolves. The CLI offers you a very simple "Yes/No/Shut-up-and-do-as-I-tell-you" but the interactive interface starts spitting all kinds of things at me. I've never been able to properly resolve a conflict in interactive mode.

That said, I don't really use interactive mode and know perhaps 5% of what it is capable of. I simply haven't found a reason to climb that learning curve yet.