A Better Package Manager

[Snowhog]

Re: A Better Package Manager

I use only Synaptic or apt-get action [option(s)] for package management. I haven't been let down yet. Solid approach (for me).

[Zorael]

Re: A Better Package Manager

Some non-free software requires you to agree to the license interactively during the install process. One example is Sun Java, which throws up a text based license notice and confirmation button in the console. Of course that works fine with apt-get and aptitude. Adept even handles it properly from what I remember. KPackageKit can't do it though, so the install just fails somehow.

Ah, that might be it. But then I still wonder;

I'm not sure where KPackageKit is going - I heard that PackageKit doesn't support dialogs popping up during package installation like debs are prone to doing? Doesn't that completely invalidate PackageKit in a Debian-based distro? Likely I'm just misunderstanding something.

[Telengard]

Re: A Better Package Manager

Zorael, I am not an authority here. Can you prove one way or another what happens? There should be logs for both KPackageKit and maybe the package itself.

I don't really mind the idea of using KPackageKit, but it has to be more reliable before I will trust it. In the meantime, apt-get and aptitude never fail, except in the case of user error or occasional weird glitch.

At any rate, any package contained within the official distro repos should install without fail regardless of which package manager one chooses. Any failure must be considered a fault in the package manager or due to bad packaging.

[Vistaus]

Re: A Better Package Manager

Packagekit does support dialog popups during installation. Take a look at openSUSE, which also use Packagekit as a backend (if you use factory, you can also choose for Zypp as a backend). So it does work, but KPackageKit doesn't support them. That's the problem here.

[raffytaffy]

Re: A Better Package Manager

I also use synaptic on my 9.10 for most of the common software additions or removals. Terminal comes in handy with apt-get as well. I am not sure if I fully trust kpackage kit to update my system. Perhaps I will try it in 10.4....time will tell.

[bailout]

Re: A Better Package Manager

I haven't had any problems with kpackagekit so far. I do think the interface is overly complex though.

I can't understand why so many people like synaptic so much. I used ubuntu for 8.10 and 9.04 and found search in synaptic poor compared to the kde3 version of adept.

I think kubuntu's main problem with package managers is that it never sticks with one for long enough. First there was kynaptic then adept and now kpackagekit.

[Vistaus]

Re: A Better Package Manager

@bailout: I agree with not sticking long enough. So many people liked Adept (even the KDE4-version), including me, so why didn't they just changed Adept a little bit so it could be integrated with the System Settings (like KPackageKit)? Adept was a really good package manager, although the KDE4 version was only a beta. But still, it worked good enough for just installing and removing packages. And thats what a package manager is used for. If you want advanced tasks, then you could always switch to Synaptic for that. Adept, I miss you...

[skunk]

Re: A Better Package Manager

This blog post from the Adept developer may shed some light on the reasons
http://web.mornfall.net/adept.html

[Vistaus]

Re: A Better Package Manager

I know that blog post, but if they had kept Adept, Peter Rockai would've probably made Adept ready for integration with System Settings.

[GreyGeek]

Re: A Better Package Manager

I have never been let down with Synaptic. Because it is well designed it is also intuitive. I also like the day-by-day history of additions and removals it tracks because that has helped me back out of some installs which required several dependencies that "autoremove" didn't.

KPackageKit, on the other hand, is NOT intuitive nor an easy interface to use. It's search function does so poorly. But, for me, it works very well (better than Synaptic) for software update and notifications, so I keep it around.

One big area of failure is when I try to use KPackageKit for installing a single *.deb package I may have downloaded from somewhere other than the repository. It fails, most often because of agreement dialogs it fails to display for the user to interact with. GDebi, on the other hand, works beautifully in such situations, and also pulls in required dependencies, so I've come to rely on it for installing . From Dolphin it is easy to envoke GDebi.