>From: eben1@tampabay.rr.com
>Reply-To: slug@nks.net
>To: slug@nks.net
>Subject: [SLUG] Ubuntu questions
>Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 01:48:22 -0500
>
>So I put Ubuntu 5.10 ("Breezy Badger"... where do they get these names?)
In the past, I believe that Mark Shuttleworth (guy who started Ubuntu)
picked the names. The next release of Ubuntu, due in April, will be called
"Dapper Drake". After Dapper, the names will be picked from suggestions sent
in from the community and each name will start with the next letter of the
alphabet that follows the first letter of the previous release.
Also, the Ubuntu versioning system is a little unusual as it is based on the
date of release. The version numbers for releases are in X.Y format where X
is the two digit year and Y is the month. (e.g. Ubuntu 5.10 was released in
October 2005).
>on my machine tonight, after making a complete backup. I have a couple
>questions'
>
>1. How do I use apt-*? I've used strictly rpm since the mid 1990s.
There are many commnads available for manages packages in Ubuntu so I'll
introduce you to a few of the common ones. Keep in mind these should be run
as root which means prefix them with "sudo" in Ubuntu (Ubuntu disables the
root account by default for security. Any user who is part of the admin
group can obtain root privileges with sudo or gksudo.)
# update local list of available packages. This is especially important
after adding/removing repositories
apt-get update
# search for a package with "epiphany" in the package name or short
description
apt-cache search epiphany
# install package "epiphany-browser"
apt-get install epiphany-browser
# upgrade a specific package (only if there is a newer version of it in the
repository since you last installed it).
apt-get upgrade epiphany-browser
# upgrade all packages that are currently installed:
apt-get upgrade
Ubuntu is based on Debian so there is much documentation on the Internet
about apt if you care to find out more.
>2. I like fvwm2 as a window manager, but cannot find it in the list of
>packages offered by Synaptic. Same with a couple more programs. Should
>I go ahead and compile them from source? Is there an "official" way, so
>that the database knows about them?
apt-get uses repositories which are groups of packages (binary or source)
that can be automatically installed from the Internet. The configuration
file for the repositories to use is /etc/apt/sources.list. Check out the
man page for sources.list
Basically the structure is this:
A B C D1 [D2 ...]
A - type of packages (usually deb or deb-src)
B - address of repository
C - name of release (e.g. breezy)
D - one or more types of packages to be included (Ubuntu uses main,
restricted, universe and multiverse to group packages based on their degree
of security updates, legal status, etc).
Here is an example line from my sources.list file:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy main restricted universe
multiverse
>3. It seems every package I tell Synaptic to remove (OK, not *every*
>one...) says ubuntu-desktop depends on it. What *is* that? Some of the
>others claim that its removal will render the system unusable. Will it
>really?
A typical package contains the files for that package and a list of
dependencies which allow apt to automatically resolve dependency issues.
As Tyler already mentioned, Debian (and hence Ubuntu) occasionally make use
of "metapackages" to allow the user to easily install a group of packages.
The metapackage does not actually contain any files itself, so removing it
does no harm. The ubuntu-desktop metapackage depends on all of the files
that are included after a default Ubuntu installation. Having ubuntu-desktop
installed ensures that if you upgrade to the next release of Ubuntu, you
will automatically have new packages installed if Ubuntu developers have
added any new packages to the dependencies list in ubuntu-desktop.
>4. I haven't looked around, but DVD/mp3/movie file players, and mixer
>adjusters (alsactl is fine)?
Ubuntu is pretty much Debian with a more polished GNOME so there are lots of
programs you could use. If you enable the restricted, universe and
multiverse repositories, you'll find many packages compiled and ready to
work with Ubuntu.
>I'm sure I'll have more, as I haven't done a complete upgrade like this
>in years.
>
>--
>-eben
Well now that you have a Debian-based distro you have no reason to wait
years for upgrades. :)
-Jonathon
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