Re: [PLUG] Gutsy

[JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org>]

> Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 19:13:06 -0400
> From: "Brent Saner" <brent.saner@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Gutsy
>
> and how does "aptitude clean" fit into this?

The same place that 'apt-get clean' or 'apt-get autoclean' fit.  Here's 
the aptitude man page section, but the apt-get one says the same thing a 
lot more verbosely:

clean
    Removes all previously downloaded .deb files from the package
    cache directory (usually /var/cache/apt/archives).

autoclean
    Removes any cached packages which can no longer be downloaded. This
    allows you to prevent a cache from growing out of control over time
    without completely emptying it.

IOW, these are run on the local client, to keep the local package cache 
(/var/cache/apt/archives *.deb files) under control.  'apt-get 
autoremove' (which I just noticed is not present in either tool in 
Debian Etch, or in Gutsy 'aptitude') uninstalls packages that it thinks 
are not needed any longer.  'deborphan' lists packages that it thinks 
are not needed any longer, so you can feed that into your choice of 
remove program.

Possibly aptitude doesn't have 'autoremove' because it already does that 
all by itself, which is one of the reasons to use it instead?


> (it's always better to use aptitude than apt-get, in my opinion)

You are correct.  And it's not just your opinion, it's strongly 
recommended by the Debian folks to use aptitude instead of apt-get or 
dselect (sorry, can't find the citation right now, but here is one for 
Ubuntu: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGetHowto).  My problems 
with that are as follows:

1) Force of habit (this is the main one :)
2) I find apt-get a LOT easier to type than aptitude for some reason
3) aptitude installs "recommended" packages by default, which I hate. 
Yes, you can turn that off, and I do, but...

Later,
JP
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP            |:::======|        jp{at}jpsdomain{dot}org
My Account, My Opinions     |=========|      http://www.jpsdomain.org/
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