Tips on using Aptitude (was: upgrading from breezy to dapper and adept)

[Michel D'HOOGE]

On Friday 04 August 2006 17:36, Francisco Borges wrote:
> The right option here, AFAIK, is to use aptitute instead of (deborphan +
> apt-get). As it solves the problem that deborphan is supposed to solve
> and lot's of other limitations of apt-get.
>
> Check this for the advantages of aptitute over apt-get:
> http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Debian/2004-04/3181.html

I would advise the following steps:
1- start aptitude in interactive mode (bash$ sudo aptitude). If you're unsure, 
start aptitude as a normal user, you will still be able to go root later.
2- filter on manually installed packages (press 'L' then input the 
expression '~i!~M')
3- Go through the resulting list and flag as automatic (key "Upcase M") all 
the packages that you don't really care about. You can flag a whole section 
at once by pressing 'M' on the section summary line. Undo is 'Ctrl-U', 
re-install is '+' and manually installed flag is 'm'
4- At the end, press 'g' to check whether some packages will be removed and 
optionally cancel their removal by pressing '+'.
5- From now on, only use aptitude to install packages!

On the command line, you can get a list of wanted packages with
bash$ aptitude search '~i!~M'

On my dapper, I have only 64 such packages!
-- 
Michel