Add/Remove Software for Dummies

[Mordac85]

I just performed a fresh install and I have to say I don't know what the dev guys were thinking with this, but this whole Add/Remove Software applet is not very intuitive. I had to mark a pkg, that appeared to not be installed, for what seemed like deletion and low and behold it installed it. Some packages though, will just skip right back to the query results w/o any explanation and it seems it's b/c some dependency is not met (i.e. MythTV backend master if you don't have any MythTV components installed yet).

I wonder if they hired relatives of the guys that came up with HP's early calculators? And, of course the Help button is grayed out. I think I'm going to stick w/the terminal and, for everyone I have gotten to switch to kubuntu, I will apologize for the idiots that couldn't clean the lint out of their belly buttons long enough to see this was not very well thought out. I guess we can't call it a bug either, so it must be a 'feature', right?

[flarson]

Re: Add/Remove Software for Dummies

Watching this forum for the last couple of days I am beginning to think that none of the GUI tools are likely to provide a clean upgrade from one distribution to another, and that even if you manage to get upgraded it will reset package selections to what it considers the norm. I am thankful that I know apt, because if I did not trying to run Ubuntu using the GUI package tools would be very frustrating.

[Guest]

Re: Add/Remove Software for Dummies

"But thanks for Linux, Debian, KDE and Kubuntu you have several other well tested methods to manage the software packages.
Just install Adept or Synaptic."

So I should use the package manager to install another package manager so I can install packages ?

[flarson]

Re: Add/Remove Software for Dummies

Yeah, now were getting somewhere. Maybe some Ubuntu devs will read this and figure out where they need to spend their effort. I personally think that you will do yourself the most good learning to use aptitude as a command line tool for updates and upgrades. You can do almost anything youwill want with
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude -f full-upgrade
sudo aptitude install package name
sudo aptitude remove packagename
aptitude search something

To learn more try "man apt".

I know, many here will say it is too hard to remember but I think it is very simple because they all make perfect sense, and most importantly they all work, reliably, time after time, doing what they should. And if you want to learn more the power is almost unlimited. APT is without doubt the best package management software in existence. It is the rock of Debian, and a large part of the reason Ubuntu is built on Debian.

Getting close to rant mode, I better stop here.

[Nels]

Re: Add/Remove Software for Dummies

Hi all!

I am new to Linux and have used Windows and Mac OS X for years. I have just installed Kubuntu 9.04 on my desktop because I heard great things about it. The installation went fine, but not I am going nuts figuring out how to add software. I have just spent hours reading various forums and nothing works. I found Kpackagekit (and it took me a while to find it!), but it only shows what is already installed on my computer. I can't even get Firefox! I tried downloading it with Konqueror, but the file went into my documents for some mysterious reasons and I still can't figure out how to install it. I opened it and extracted it, but nothing happens. I've also tried to run "sudo apt-get install firefox' in the Terminal, but it says "Package not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source. Package has not installation candidate." What the hell is this? I thought Linux was supposed to be user friendly, but is nowhere near the Mac! How do I get Firefox, and Skype and the "kubuntu-restricted-extras" for my media files

Also Konqueror works, but freezes when logging in to Hotmail. I can't even reach my inbox. And where is the firewall on this thing? I don't find the help pages very useful in general.

Sorry all to sound so frustrated, but I have wasted hours on this and I really don't understand what is wrong. Thanks a lot for your help.

Nels.