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Synaptic: Point-n-Click Software Management (LinMagAuOrg)

[Posted October 10, 2003 by ris]

LinMagAu.org takes a look at Synaptic, a package management tool for Debian systems. "Unlike Apt, which performs all actions immediately, Synaptic lets you queue up a number of actions until you're satisfied with your choices. Selecting a package in the list and marking it to be installed or removed won't cause a sudden flurry of activity. In fact, it'll look like nothing much is happening at all. Synaptic just makes a little internal note about your selection and waits to see what you do next. That means you can browse through the packages at your leisure without waiting for your computer to go through a potentially lengthy download-configure-install cycle for every item you select."

(Log in to post comments)

Posted Oct 10, 2003 18:10 UTC (Fri) by trutkin (guest, #3919) [Link]

I'd just like to point out that Synaptic is also useful on RPM based system that have apt-rpm
installed. I use it reguarly on my Redhat9 system.

Everything old is new again (and again, and ...)

Posted Oct 11, 2003 13:52 UTC (Sat) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link]

Back when I first tried Debian in 1996 (or early '97, maybe), one of the things I liked about it was dselect. Oh, sure, cramming a multi-pane GUI into a text-mode interface left some rough edges, but you could scan or search the list of available packages, sort it various ways, make selections (see that they would drag in a kitchen sink you didn't want, or would force the uninstall of things you did want, and revert that choice), and... oh, well, yeah, it would wait until you said you were done making changes in the package selections to actually go and fetch them.

dselect, aptitude, synaptic... oh well, different looks for different markets, I guess.

Everything old is new again (and again, and ...)

Posted Oct 11, 2003 17:10 UTC (Sat) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

dselect has very unintuitive interface. Normally Enter acts on the currectly selected item, but in dselect it has a global meaning "Confirm, quit (check dependencies)".

aptitude is a bit better in that regard, but the influence of dslelect is still noticeable. I think it's for the same "market", but it still needs a lot of work.

synaptic depends on X, which makes it less useful for system recovery, but allows it to implement an interface better reflecting the concepts of package management.

Synaptic: Point-n-Click Software Management (LinMagAuOrg)

Posted Oct 12, 2003 4:22 UTC (Sun) by gomadtroll (guest, #11239) [Link]

It is a mistake to compart synaptic to apt. Apt is for selecting & insatlling a package, so you are correct when you mention the 'sudden flurry of activity' associated with apt. Synaptic is more like dselect or aptitude where no package is installed untill all depends are met and ok'd by the user. all in all a nonsensical comparison :)

Now if it only supported yum as well....

Posted Oct 13, 2003 8:44 UTC (Mon) by ahornby (subscriber, #3366) [Link]

Yum seems more reliable that apt-get on RPM based systems.

aptitude is better than Synaptic

Posted Oct 14, 2003 19:36 UTC (Tue) by petebull (subscriber, #7857) [Link]

aptitude rules. Its features make dselect a dwarf and it has a apt-get
compatible commandline interface.

Easy research why a package isn't ready to install and minesweeper during
downloads.

Makes me a happy debian-user.

Peter