According to Marius Vollmer <marius.vollmer at nokia.com>:
> Can you give more information about how the AM is slower than apt-get?
> Do you need to perform too many clicks in the UI to get your task
> done, or do you have to wait longer until it has downloaded and
> installed the packages?
Mostly it's the clicking/browsing issue. Also, the waiting for the lists
to update in the UI.
Part of the problem is that completely random sectioning, which makes it
pretty much infeasible to browse except in the "all" section (yes, I've
got red-pill enabled). With that list, scrolling is awkward. Just being
able to filter out packages beginning with "lib" would be useful. The
sectioning problem goes back to not have standard repos, real project
policy, etc.
I doubt the actual *actions* are slower (modulo UI list updates), but
it's a heck of a lot faster for me to type "apt-get install foo" than
browse in the AM. Also, given the many repos I've got listed, I'm a
heavy user of "apt-cache policy" to figure out just where packages are
coming from.
I was going to complain that the AM didn't show what new dependencies
were going to be installed by a particular package, but I just looked,
and there *is* a tab with that info. Is that a new with the recent
firmware upgrade, or was I just blind before?
It would be nice if the AM would allow you to re-configure (in
the dpkg sense) a partially installed app, without requiring an
uninstall/reinstall. Probably an appropriate label would be "try to fix
broken packages".
But mostly it's the fact that I'm extremely comfortable with the
apt-get/apt-cache/dpkg command lines. I don't use synaptic, either.
Oh, and while you're reading: it would be *really nice* to have
dependency tracking, like aptitude. This means that when you install
foo, and it requires bar and baz, and you later remove foo, the tool
remembers that bar and bas were automatically installed only to support
foo, and removes those as well (assuming no other package also needs bar
or baz, of course). The latest apt suite has this built in, so maybe it
wouldn't be too hard?
> Also, when you say that operations often fail, do you mean that the AM
> crashes or leaves your system in a inconsistent state, or do you mean
> that the AM doesn't find solutions to satisfy all dependencies whereas
> apt-get is able to find a solution and proceed?
Mostly I mean that updates and installs fail, downloads hang, etc. But
now that I think about it (rather than shooting my mouth off randomly),
this probably isn't your problem. I only use the AM when I'm away from
home, and I'm going to guess that it's an issue of the sites crappy
wifi, since I also have problems browsing there.
> We will finally get a "Update All" button in Diablo.
Yea! But should be "Upgrade All", for consistency with apt terminology.
:-)
> (In all likelihood it will just run all the updates one after the
> other instead of all at once as apt-get upgrade would do.)
That's fine, and makes perfect sense for environment.
thanks for reading my rant,
Steve
--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net
