Synaptic question

[Pumpino]

I installed Knoppix 3.7 a couple of days ago and I love it. I doubt I'll ever go back to SUSE. ;)

I've used Synaptic to update all packages. I left it set to "Ignore" in preferences, rather than Stable, Unstable, Testing or Experimental. Does this mean that it respects each packages status when updating, whereas setting it to say, Unstable would update every installed package from the Unstable tree?

I've been doing the default upgrade rather than dist-upgrade via Synaptic. Is this the safer method?

Thanks.

[GreyGeek]

I've used apt-get (see my msg in that forum), synaptic and KPackage.

I prefer Kpackage because, like synaptic, it lists all the files that are available on the mirrors in your sources.list , and breaks them into four groups, depending on if you've installed them or not.

When you check off an app to install in KPackage then click the install button you're taken to another dialog that includes a "test" checkbox. It also lists any dependencies that may be required. If you click the test checkbox then click the "install button" you see a "RESULT=<n>" in the right panel. If it is "RESULT=0" then there are no problems, but if it is some other number besides 0 then you best not install that app. I haven't been able to find that feature in synaptic. The same goes for upgrading or uninstalling an app. Had I used KPackage last night, instead of apt-get, I wouldn't have had to reinstall my entire KDE system..

[markb]

Pumpino, I can't answer your question sorry but I also use Synaptic which I find to be far superior to kpackage (e.g. the search facilities are in another realm). However, if there is one complaint I can make about Synaptic is its poor documentation. E.g. on those default archive settings - What does "ignore" mean? What does "now" mean? I haven't even managed to google my way to answers for these. I'm sure these short descriptions mean something to the developers but how can they expect users to guess their meaning - particularly when they seem to have no obvious corollary to any commands in apt?

[Pumpino]

Yeah, exactly. I've been leaving it on "ignore" simply because it's the default and because I assume that Knoppix would include packages from stable, unstable and testing, and I want to preserve the tree that each package was taken from.

However, I always go to unstable or testing for software like Firefox, The Gimp and KDE, as I want the latest versions.

By the way, does Knoppix's creator ever post on these forums, or are the forums limited to users helping each other out?