[Gllug] Debian Matching Machines

[Russell Howe]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 09:15:52PM +0100, John Winters wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 20:03 +0100, Chris Bell wrote:
> > On Wed 06 Apr, Peter Childs wrote:
> > > 
> > > 
> > >     Why so, I have been told be many that the best way to install debian 
> > > is to skip the dselect stage and use apt manually.
> > > 
> >    That may be so for an expert, but new users to Woody would usually prefer
> > to allow tasksel to load a sensible set of packages for general use, and
> > dselect to adjust the selection for personal preferences.
> 
> As a new user of Debian, I never managed to work out how to drive
> dselect.  I just tried it again now and I still can't fathom it.  Its UI
> is arcane in the extreme.  Far, far easier to use apt-get and friends
> than solve dselect.

dselect with the 'apt' backend selected is actually remarkably easy to
drive, I find...

The keys you need are:

	+      - marks package for installation
	_      - marks package for purging (use - if for some reason
	         you still want bits of the package left behind -
		 config files, etc)
	/      - do a search forwards
	\      - do the last search again
	Up     - Move up a line
	Down   - Move down a line
	PgUp   - Jump up a page in the listing
	PgDown - Jump down a page
	Home   - Jump to the top
	End    - Jump to the bottom

If you get a 'sub-screen' asking you to resolve a conflict, the same
keys work. One key I discovered recently, by RTFMing, was 'R' which
reverts changes (say you accidentally tell dselect to purge base-files
or something - rather than go and correct each individual package's
state, just press R and it'll magically go back the way it was).

Hit enter to accept changes.

If dselect gets stuck in a broken dependency loop, and refuses to let
you get back to the main menu, either fix it, or press X to say "I don't
care. Install things anyway".

I can't really think of any other keys I use in dselect

So, that's 13 keys in total, which is rather a lot, but almost half of
them are intuitive anyway :)

I'd recommend installing apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges (and
reconfiguring the latter to email 'changelogs' rather than 'news')

Also, debfoster is quite handy if you want to strip away all the extra
packages which often end up installed yet serving no purpose (I use it a
lot for UML systems where space matters).

Still, I should probably get around to giving aptitude a proper try.
Last time I tried to use it, I found its interface bizarre and
unintuitive, although maybe I'm just weird :)

-- 
Russell Howe       | Why be just another cog in the machine,
rhowe at siksai.co.uk | when you can be the spanner in the works?
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