Kubuntu package management

[neddie]

I'm playing with a live version of Kubuntu (6.10), and am a bit confused about the package manager. I can see I've got apt-get from the command line, but it's horribly sensitive to non-exact matches of package names. Instead of listing me possible matches, it just refuses. But then I found apt-cache which kind of fixes that.

 

I also see that I've got a gui called adept, or in fact two very different-looking guis depending on whether I select "Add/Remove Programs" or System->"Adept Manager Manage Packages" from the menu. So I tried to do a system update and of course it was huge, so I tried to deinstall Openoffice to reduce the size of the download. But unless I'm missing something, the apt-get doesn't really seem to resolve the dependencies - when I ask it to remove openoffice.org it just says ok, without removing the others. When I ask it to remove openoffice.org-calc it says ok, and says that it's been removed, but I can still start openoffice calc. But when I try to remove openoffice.org-common, it just says "the commit would break packages". And trying the same thing from the command line (apt-get remove openoffice.org-common) just gives the error "Some packages could not be installed". Installed? "Broken packages". But that's what I expect apt-get to do, tell me that in order to remove that, it needs to remove these others too, is that ok?

 

Then I press "Full update" to request an update for everything, and try to then deselect the openoffice ones- except "cancel changes" doesn't deselect the upgrade request. This adept thing has also crashed a couple of times on me and I've not been playing with it for long.

 

So, my questions: Should I be trying to use this adept thing, or is it all a bit too flaky and I should be sticking with apt-get from the command line? Or is there another front-end I should be using instead? And should either tool really be able to resolve the dependencies properly, or am I doing something silly when I'm trying to remove openoffice.org?

[Artificial Intelligence]

Get synaptic and instead of adept it's horrible.

If you go commandline use aptitude instead of apt-get. aptitude is better to solve dependecy/issues.

[daniewicz]

Running kdesu adept_manager (which brings up a gui) has worked well for me

[neddie]

Get synaptic and instead of adept it's horrible.

Ok thanks, I'm giving that a go now. Synaptic is also having horrible problems with openoffice but maybe that's a special example... and when I want to select a package to upgrade, the "upgrade" option is greyed out even though I can still select it.

 

Would I be right in thinking that all these four options (apt-get, adept, aptitude, synaptic) all use the same database at the backend, so it won't get confused if I install some things with one tool and some with another?

[jagwah]

so it won't get confused if I install some things with one tool and some with another?

 

I don't thik so, I use Synaptic for everything except updates, and use the update manager (adept) for updates only (why? haven't got a clue, I just do :) ) All goes well for me.

 

I only go near CLI stuff when needed, other than that I keep as far away from it as I can :unsure:

[neddie]

Another kind of unrelated question is to do with the console. In Mandriva, if I'm using the tab key to autocomplete a path, I just have to type cd /some/directory/ and then press tab and it'll show me all the subdirectories under "directory", then I can carry on typing and press tab again, and so on. In Kubuntu, it seems that the tab autocomplete only works if I've typed at least one letter. If I've only got as far as directory/ then pressing tab will do nothing (apart from beeping loudly at me). I have to press tab a second time in order for it to show me the list. Is this configurable, can I get it to behave like Mandriva's? Yeah, you'll probably just think this is a minor thing but it grates me.

 

And when I'm using sudo, say I want to copy a file but can't quite remember what it's called. As soon as I go into a root-only directory, the tab autocomplete stops working - I guess because in the console I'm still a normal user and so can't read the directories until I've executed the command. But this is annoying. And if I try to use an asterisk in the filename, like

sudo ls /some/directory/file*

then it doesn't show me any files at all, even though when I do sudo ls /some/directory/ then it shows me them. I guess this is because the shell is expanding my * before it passes it to sudo, right? But even with "" around the path, it still doesn't work. Do I have to use sudo -i all the time to avoid these issues?

 

And please don't suggest I remove sudo, I'm just starting to play with kubuntu and want to keep it as standard as possible!

[Artificial Intelligence]

I think it's kubuntu team have set it up that way, I'm on Ubuntu so I can't hardly help you there.

Edited April 1, 2007 by Artificial Intelligence

[neddie]

So the terminal in ubuntu isn't the same? Can I maybe install the gnome version of the terminal and try that out in Kubuntu?

[ianw1974]

You can, but you'd probably have to install the full gnome package set. I did this when using kubuntu, I then installed all the gnome stuff later so that I had both desktops.

 

I think it's called ubuntu-desktop to get the gnome stuff in correctly. It's like a dummy package to get everything that normally comes under the ubuntu system compared to kubuntu. Hope I explained that OK :)

[Artificial Intelligence]

Do this in konsole

sudo aptitude install ubuntu-desktop

 

so if you don't want it anymore, simple;

 

sudo aptitude remove ubuntu-desktop

 

it will make sure all the packages from installing the ubuntu-desktop metapackage will be removed as well

[neddie]

Well I tried xterm and gnome-terminal and they both behave in exactly the same way as Konsole, so I'm guessing it's some kind of bash configuration rather than something in the console program itself. It seems that tab autocomplete only works when what youv'e typed so far is unique, otherwise (instead of displaying a list of matching entries) it just does nothing, so you don't know whether it has matched nothing or several. Then you have to press tab again and then it shows the list.

 

And that with the somedirectory/file* also occurs in all consoles, it must be because as a user I haven't got read access. So if I type "sudo ls /some/directory/file*" I get nothing, but if I type "sudo ls /somdirectory/ | grep file" then it works. Just a little bit too weird.

 

It would be interesting to try a live CD of Debian to see whether that's any easier or less fiddlly to use, but I guess they don't think they need one.

 

On a positive note, I was going to post asking why GoogleEarth only runs at an unbearably molluscular pace under Kubuntu and says it can only do software 3d rendering (when it's fine under Mandriva), but then I tried it again and it worked this time. So another problem solved...

[Greg2]

It would be interesting to try a live CD of Debian to see whether that's any easier or less fiddlly to use, but I guess they don't think they need one.

Give it a try:

http://debian-live.alioth.debian.org/

http://live.debian.net/