Continued from Part 1 of my series on Ubuntu tweaking.
When I first planned to run Ubuntu 6.10 “Edgy Eft”, many reviews on the net showed that not everyone is happy, some whom might think its not edgy enough, some who had their systems broken because they tried to upgrade.
Remember one of my reason I installed Ubuntu? The nature of Ubuntu and its community makes it easy to use, customise and repair the system. In this post, I would show ways to play with your ubuntu system- using apt, guides on the net, and using some other packaging or unified installation software.
Apts
Apt (Advanced Packaging Tool) was perhaps the reason why many chose Debian. The Ubuntu repositories could then be the very reason that others like me chose ubuntu. Apt-get, Aptitude are very useful and powerful commands to play with. However after trying Ubuntu Synaptic Package Manager for time, I love it for these reasons:
- It has a gui (Graphical User Interface) for those who wouldn’t even touch a shell.
- Its really easy to add, disable, delete sources
- Easy to find, mark and install many packages at one go
- Download packages simultaneously, with ability to resume, making downloads faster
- Notifies you of updates and easy to access via its tray icon.
Even now I use Synaptic a lot and recommend it, apt-get and aptitude are still as important and good to learn and use. Read about aptitude versus apt-get
Finding Ubuntu Repositories
Having nice repository sources is perhaps all you need for a long time. Using these packages, I find that it is even easier to search and install software compared to Windows.
1st, you can uncomment the less official but supported ubuntu sources from /etc/sources.list or preferably do so in Synaptic. Next try out source-o-matic a Ubuntu source.list generator which produces a source list based on selection of criteria you chose. Ubuntu geek has a source list for Edgy Eft which is worth taking a look. Lastly for sources, for the more adventurous, I would recommend Treviño source list which including many packages compiled by him.
Other Debian Packages
Automatix is an Automated GUI installation script which installs the common software people demands. Read here as their official site seems down.
When using lots of “super-cow powers” apts, dun forget they are basically Debian packages. Finding and downloading debian packages is a very simple way to install applications. See GetDeb - Click And Run - Software Portal
Other Packaging
One of Apt/Deb uses is that they are a solution to dependencies. However, it is not the only solution around. Many package management exists for other distros - portage (emerge) for Gentoo, packman for ArkLinux, rpm for Redhat… There are some which are distro independent.
Klik, its another innovative web-based click and install software manager. From its webpage, “Klik strives to be the easiest way to download and run software, without installation”. I love the way you install Klik, with at most 2 lines (in user mode without the dollar signs):
$ sudo apt-get install binutils libstdc++5 rpm gnome-about # for (k)Ubuntu
$ wget klik.atekon.de/client/install -O -|sh
Autopackage - Easy Linux Software Installations for both users and developers. “Autopackage doesn’t need to be downloaded or installed. When you install your first package, Autopackage will install itself automatically.” Check out their package listings
Zero Install system is a caching network filesystem, to make software installation completely automatic. This decentralised installation systems has been made to work with the Rox Desktop
Lastly, if you were to experiment building from sources, you would like to work with the command, esp. tar, cvs, svn, git. CVS (Concurrent Versioning System), SVN (Subversion), GIT(distributed revision control file system project) are also repositories system at a different level.
CheckInstall is a software which helps you keep track of installations done using make install, and creates distro based uninstallations like dpkg on debian.
Welcome to the addictive world of Linux software.
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