Apt-Get - noobie - help

[Cuddles]

First, I know of the Apt-get FAQ, and have read it, all through it, and still, as a fledgling in the Linux World, have a question...

Being new to this apt-get and KNOWING that thousands of programs exist out their, how do you find them?

e.g. I want to find Screen Savers? All that comes with Knoppix, even after a HD Install, is RANDOM, and BLANK SCREEN - Now Random would be nice, if only it had more to choose from than itself and a Blank Screen. Blank Screen is nice, but, I come from the world of Windoze, and your personality is strongly based on the kind of SCREEN SAVER you have running...

How does one FIND something to apt-get? I usually post here, and someone says: "just apt-get xxxxxxx" -=- Which is all well and good, but, not at all self sufficient. Rickenbachurus [sp] not making bad blood here, but, when you have millions of "packages", software, programs, utilities, games, etc... to choose from, how does one find something. I've tried google, and i've tried FreshMeat, but, I easily got overwhelmed with screens and screens of programs that seemed to not have anything to do with the querry I asked for. "screen savers" "linux" "download" - and I got windows, unix, PC, laptop, servers, etc... and games, arcade, gameboy, etc... Of the more than 1900 entries, I found only one "screen saver", and it was lame. Even if I did find a screen saver, how does that translate to apt-get ????

A simple GUI to view what IS out their to apt-get ??? That would be nice, even a text file to view, so you can SEE and decide what you want, then apt-get it....

Thanks for any input...
Cuddles

[knixkw]

Under www.rpmseek.com You can seek for .deb packages, too.

The name of the the screen saver package for KDE is kscreensaver.

[Cuddles]

Thank you

I have bookmarked the site for future reference

I like the site, its just what the doctor ordered, thanks...

And thanks for the extra help, I'm gonna look at the package, and probably apt-get it...

Mucho,
Cuddles

[Cuddles]

hmmmmm,

apt-get install kscreensaver -=- died with broken package error. Something about, I asked for a single file, and it requires something else, possibly if I am using an unstable, that this needs to be moved to Incoming, etc...

Oh well, I'll look on the web site you pointed me too, I'll find something

Thanks again,
Cuddles

[Cuddles]

Ok, this is getting fun - I wish I knew what/where/how to deal with this stuff...

I tried to go to the site mentioned, found "something" and when I thought I wanted it, was dealing with a d/l named something.#.#.#.#.#-##.XXX.$$$ etc... choices of "something"

Decided to fall back on my old thought... Went into KPackage...

Scrolled through the listing with the "NEW" tab, found some neat programs that had a big "N" in front of them, assuming "U" means update. Marked them so that next to the programs had a nice green check mark, then clicked on the Install Marked - the window that popped up had the programs/packages/whatever showing on the left panel - when I clicked on Install - it failed saying the EXE or something could not be found - or something like that..............

What I want:
Something Simple - Something that when you know what you want - you can translate it into apt-get - and get it. Enough of the apt-get errors at the end - I tried to apt-get install kdetoys - it took more than an hour, and last line says "Errors were encountered while processing: "something" " - "E: Sub-process /////etc... returned an error code (1)" and dropped me back to the root prompt.

What I can deal with:
Find a program - translate that to something simple and easy like "apt-get install xxxxxxx" - and it to work. It appears that KPackage doesn't do it, apt-get doesn't do it, dpkg was the puppy that returned the error code above, so, I think dpkg can't do it.... What works here???

Someone? Answers? Thanks,
Cuddles

[baldyeti]

Hello, 2 common gui front-ends to the debian package system are synaptic and of course kpackage under KDE. I don't know them much, and am not under linux here. But what works pretty well for me is "apt-cache search xxx". This returns a list of packages whose description contains xxx (eg "screensaver"). You can then "apt-get install" said package. As usual with knoppix, you may need to try both the unstable and testing package pool (-t unstable|testing). Also, don't forget to refresh your package list before searching it (apt-get update). And you might like to visit www.apt-get.org in order to find some more exotic, non-official packages and their online repositories.

Sorry if this doesn't sound ideal, I am more of a CLI-kind-of-guy, as you can tell.

[Cuddles]

BaldYeti,

PERFECT ! Thank you.

I used the apt-get update -/- apt-cache search -/- apt-get method

Worked like a dream, I can't tell you how much you saved my sanity

Thanks again :P
Cuddles