Synaptic any better than Windows ?

[Ari Torhamo]

su, 2004-12-26 kello 11:47 +0200, Michel Clasquin kirjoitti:
> On Sun, 2004-12-26 at 05:57 +0200, Ari Torhamo wrote:
> > > > Or try complete removal option in Synaptic.
> > 
> > Can this option cause problems with dependencies? (trying to keep my
> > Ubuntu clean and unbroken :)
> 
> apt-get (and by extension, synaptic) does not allow broken dependencies,
> though it is possible to put them there if you muck around with dpkg and
> put things in manually. If apt/synaptic wants to remove dependencies, it
> will tell you.
> 
> So, for example, if you were to, say,
> 
> apt-get remove linux-386
> 
> and you don't have an alternative like linux-686 installed, apt would
> inform you that it was now going to remove every package on your system,
> since everything depends on it, and is this okay? :-)
> 
> (That is just an off-the-top-of-my-head f'r instance! No, I'm not
> testing it on my system!)

Thank you for this advice. I tried it, but there seems to be a problem
because now I'm not able to boot to Ubuntu... OK, I'm just kidding ;-)

> The only difference between "remove" and "completely remove" in synaptic
> is whether the configuration files are to be removed along with the
> binaries. How cleanly this is done depends on the package maintainer. If
> the maintainer forgot to mention in the rules governing that package
> that /usr/blah/blah/foo.txt should be removed on a purge or "completely
> remove", then it won't be. It happens occasionally. Not that a single
> leftover file can usually do much damage.

This really is an easy-to-understand explanation, thanks. I'll save it
for future reference :-) This apt system seems so central and important
in Ubuntu (and Debian) that maybe I'll try to learn more about it. I
have bookmarked many links to Linux and Debian resources that people
have sent to this list and I think I'm going have a closer look at them.
I'm just afraid that to get a good understanding in one area, you have
to get familiar with a couple of others too. And to understand these
other areas you again have to know a couple of others. And to undrstand
these other areas you have to... well, I could go on and on :-)
 
> Michel Clasquin

Thanks again Michel for your reply. Thanks to you Rob too.

-Ari-