Installed Synaptic & uninstalled Muon.

[zapjb]

Moun was driving me bonkers, even choosing repositories was taxing. So I installed Synaptic & uninstalled Muon. Once I sorted the repos in Synaptic (at least I think so) everything's easy-peasy.

Is this ok? Will I miss some critical updates? I wouldn't think so.

For me it's so much easier to thin down my system looking through & choosing in Synaptic.

[Teunis]

Synaptic is the package manager to match or surpass vs. options and reliability.
All of them are a front end to console type programs.
Having used Muon near exclusively for several years I would say there is no need for having GTK app Synaptic around.

If things get critical the console is still superior.

At some point all GUI package managers have their shortcomings, the ones you mention seem to be unusual for Muon and point to an installation problem.
But/ or,
Did you notice 14.04 did not come OOTB with Muon the Package Manager but with Muon Discoverer, a newer version that is presumably more friendly to new users but lacks essentials experienced users rely on like easy access to repositories?

There is also Apper, another new front end that vies for becoming the standard package manager.

[claydoh]

As long as you still have muon-updater installed, you will get update notifications, which you won't get via synaptic on its own.
As for repo management, unless you install the package software-properties-gtk, you only get the most basic tool in synaptic, that is missing some ubuntu-specific options, such as ppa management, release upgrade notifications, and other taxing tasks.

Fortunately, unless it is uninstalled, one can still access this in kubuntu via software-properties-kde, if it is not too taxing.

As to slimming down, you might be surprised at this (I was):
Muon Discover: Installed-Size: 978 KiB
Muon (package manager): Installed-Size: 1.4Mib
Synaptic: Installed-Size: 7.5 Mib
Even if you count for the libraries Muon uses, such as qapt, it is overall smaller than synaptic.
(The size of synaptic is because it is pretty well self-contained in that it has almost no external dependencies, so all the things it needs are built in to the binary).

[zapjb]

Ok sorted now thanks all.

@ claydoh I just meant it was difficult for me to navigate the muon gui. With Synaptic which I've been using for over 10 years it's much easier.

[Teunis]

Hmm, I'm curious what you find difficult about: Click Settings, Select Sources?

Unless you mean: It's Different

[JillSwift]

If his experience is similar to mine, it means: "It's really slow."
(To be fair: Muon is getting a lot better.)

[Teunis]

What kind of hardware do you have on the computer where Muon is slow?
I use it on an old HP mini netbook and it's fine...

[JillSwift]

What kind of hardware do you have on the computer where Muon is slow?
I use it on an old HP mini netbook and it's fine...

Well, this is a matter of perception, really. Muon isn't "objectively" slow, but it is slower than synaptic and a whole lot slower than apt-get on the cli.
It has* a few quirks that slow down some things, too - like starting a list from the top after refreshing, as in uninstalling a package out of a search list.


*or had. I haven't tried 14.04's yet.

[BobTreat]

I click the Sources Tab and it crashes Executable: muon-discover PID: 16253 Signal: Aborted (6) Time: 04/21/14 12:58:29 AM. The Search, I've never liked, and was just playing around with it, It couldn't find "wine" for example. q4wine and Play on Linux showed up but not plain old wine. Type synaptic and Muon Package Manager is the result. Anytime I install Kubuntu, one of the first things I get is Synaptic.

[zapjb]

Glad I'm not alone at the bottom of the learning curve.

[Frank616]

Bob:

Anytime I install Kubuntu, one of the first things I get is Synaptic.

I'm with you. Muon is OK, but I am familiar with Synaptic. I have lots of storage, so I don't mind the extra libraries. I keep both on my machine, and often use the Muon update manager just because it is there, though I have done updates with Synaptic just because I was using it at the time.

Frank.