[TriLUG] RH to Debian learning curve?

[Cristobal Palmer]

For a user new to debian, aptitude may be a good introduction to
debian's package management approach, since you can do an install

sudo aptitude install emacs21

or any other operation that you might do with apt-get from the command
line, but you also get a gui-like set of menus if you call aptitude
with no arguments. Just be aware that when run from within
gnome-terminal, you have to turn off the "F10 accesses menu" feature
of gnome-terminal to be able to use aptitude's menus.

If you don't mind a gui, synaptic is great.

I wouldn't recommend dselect to a new user. The learning curve is
worse than with any of apt-get, aptitude or synaptic, and it doesn't
provide any significant advantage over any of them.

As to keeping abreast of updates: people have discussed various
approaches to managed updates on this list before. I refer you to the
very recent "debian in production" thread, in which the following two
emails stand out:

http://www.trilug.org/pipermail/trilug/Week-of-Mon-20051017/038034.html

http://www.trilug.org/pipermail/trilug/Week-of-Mon-20051017/038035.html

Straying OT...

Having said all that, I have to wonder if you perhaps shouldn't get
community feedback on the hosting provider you're looking at. I know
there are a fair number of list members who are very happy with
providers that use Xen or some other VM approach, such that you are
able to choose whatever distribution of Linux you like. Maybe start an
OT thread if you're interested in hearing about such providers.

-CMP

On 11/1/05, Tanner Lovelace <clubjuggler at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/1/05, Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I haven't found that I've had to interface directly with dpkg very
> > much if at all.
>
> There are quite a few things I want to do that I can't do using one
> of the higher level programs like apt.  For instance, given any
> particular file on the filesystem, how can I tell what package it belongs to?
> With rpm I could do "rpm -qf /path/to/file".  To do this on debian
> the equivalent command is "dpkg -S /path/to/file".
>
> While good front ends are nice, apt is not equivalent to rpm.
> Dpkg is equivalent to rpm and apt is equivalent to urpmi, yum,
> or up2date.   Many people don't realize this and therefore
> run into trouble.
>
> Cheers,
> Tanner
> --
> Tanner Lovelace
> clubjuggler at gmail dot com
> http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
> (fieldless) In fess two roundels in pale, a billet fesswise and an
> increscent, all sable.
> --
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>


--

Cristobal M. Palmer
UNC-CH SILS Student
cristobalpalmer at gmail.com
cmpalmer at ils.unc.edu
ils.unc.edu/~cmpalmer
"Television-free since 2003"