PDA

View Full Version : Vote Apt/Synaptic the best Software Update Tool at Lifehacker



MRiGnS
October 19th, 2009, 02:21 PM
It's time for Lifehacker's Hive Five again, and this time it's about the best software update tool and guess what? Apt/Synaptic is one of the contenders.

I for one voted for it, not only because I like Ubuntu, because it beats the other programs hands down.

http://lifehacker.com/5384140/five-best-software-update-tools

kellemes
October 19th, 2009, 02:28 PM
It's time for Lifehacker's Hive Five again, and this time it's about the best software update tool and guess what? Apt/Synaptic is one of the contenders.

I for one voted for it, not only because I like Ubuntu, because it beats the other programs hands down.

http://lifehacker.com/5384140/five-best-software-update-tools

APT/Synaptic is the only contender from Linux..
This is a joke.

Slug71
October 19th, 2009, 02:45 PM
APT/Synaptic is the only contender from Linux..
This is a joke.

I voted APT/Synaptic but would have liked to vote Smart/Packagekit.

APT/Synaptic kills the competion there though and rightfully so.

MRiGnS
October 19th, 2009, 03:09 PM
The Windows "alternatives" really don't compare to any Linux package management system. I'd almost say it's an insult to even include apt in this vote but then, some more publicity won't hurt.

I still think it's pretty neat that the Lifehacker crew features Linux, mostly Ubuntu, as often as they do.

NoaHall
October 19th, 2009, 03:11 PM
+1 for windows update applications sucking.

NCLI
October 19th, 2009, 03:23 PM
FileHippo Update Checker is currently in the lead... O.o

MRiGnS
October 19th, 2009, 03:58 PM
FileHippo Update Checker is currently in the lead... O.o

In it's defence, it's probably really the best free software of that kind on Windows but I really don't understand how people can vote for it over APT/synaptic other than not having a clue (read never even having touched Ubuntu, Debian, etc.).

Skripka
October 19th, 2009, 04:23 PM
I voted APT/Synaptic but would have liked to vote Smart/Packagekit.

APT/Synaptic kills the competion there though and rightfully so.

Meh Apt is annoying...PackageKit even more so.

betrunkenaffe
October 19th, 2009, 04:35 PM
Fantastic vote system. I love that refresh lets you do it again..

Seriously, this poll has no value.

Edit: Scratch that, just hit refresh, it repolls for you automatically.

MRiGnS
October 19th, 2009, 04:42 PM
Fantastic vote system. I love that refresh lets you do it again..

Seriously, this poll has no value.

You can't unless you reset your ip.
You can vote, but the vote isn't counted.

And even if it has no value regarding representative results, it's still good publicity as the winner get's another article.

APT is in second place right now and can still make it.

MRiGnS
October 19th, 2009, 05:29 PM
APT is now only 85 votes behind

NCLI
October 19th, 2009, 05:31 PM
You can't unless you reset your ip.
You can vote, but the vote isn't counted.

And even if it has no value regarding representative results, it's still good publicity as the winner get's another article.

APT is in second place right now and can still make it.
Nope, it's cookie-based, they don't look at your IP.

betrunkenaffe
October 19th, 2009, 05:36 PM
Nope, it's cookie-based, they don't look at your IP.

All I know is if you hit refresh after voting, you get a free vote each time :)

MRiGnS
October 19th, 2009, 05:43 PM
33 votes behind

NCLI
October 19th, 2009, 06:02 PM
All I know is if you hit refresh after voting, you get a free vote each time :)
Only if you don't accept cookies. Are you sure your vote is registered?

betrunkenaffe
October 19th, 2009, 06:12 PM
Only if you don't accept cookies. Are you sure your vote is registered?

Unless someone else also logged an apt vote (and only 1 person) after each time I hit refresh. I like to see how valid vote systems are when they get posted because they usually suck..

Speaking of cookies, FIrefox 3.5 doesn't have an option to allow/deny 3rd party anymore..

Xbehave
October 19th, 2009, 06:26 PM
Meh Apt is annoying...PackageKit even more so.
explain how apt, is annoying or did you just read it on some arch forum and thought it would be cool to repeat?


Speaking of cookies, FIrefox 3.5 doesn't have an option to allow/deny 3rd party anymore..
edit>preferences>privacy>use custom settings for history
it's there but the wording is odd, CBA to check for a bug report right now though.

betrunkenaffe
October 19th, 2009, 06:32 PM
edit>preferences>privacy>use custom settings for history
it's there but the wording is odd, CBA to check for a bug report right now though.

Very non-user friendly, not intuitive at all. I found it right after posting. I never really associated "history" and cookies together.

lukjad
October 19th, 2009, 06:37 PM
Voted:
APT/Synaptic 34% (1,686 votes)
FileHippo Update Checker 33% (1,603 votes)

WE ARE AHEAD!!

NCLI
October 19th, 2009, 06:50 PM
Unless someone else also logged an apt vote (and only 1 person) after each time I hit refresh. I like to see how valid vote systems are when they get posted because they usually suck..

Speaking of cookies, FIrefox 3.5 doesn't have an option to allow/deny 3rd party anymore..
It doesn't say "Thanks for your vote, but you've already voted in this poll" or something like that when you try?

MRiGnS
October 19th, 2009, 07:54 PM
APT is in the lead but the poll's still open for, I think, two more days.

So, everyone who hasn't voted yet. Vote ;>

Skripka
October 19th, 2009, 08:10 PM
explain how apt, is annoying or did you just read it on some arch forum and thought it would be cool to repeat?


Handling of source code on apt-based systems is a PITA-compared to many much more elegant alternatives such as Tazwok, pacman etc.

days_of_ruin
October 19th, 2009, 10:28 PM
Handling of source code on apt-based systems is a PITA-compared to many much more elegant alternatives such as Tazwok, pacman etc.

How is it a PITA, and why is pacman any better? Because someone on the arch forums said?

SomeGuyDude
October 19th, 2009, 10:32 PM
Synaptic is king. Apt, I'm not so much a fan of. That's why I'm curious about Shaman.

Skripka
October 19th, 2009, 10:35 PM
How is it a PITA, and why is pacman any better? Because someone on the arch forums said?

Because on some systems, installing code from source is as easy and painless as if it were already in precompiled binaries. I.e. dependency handling etc. You ever spend 30 minutes reading readmes to get several sources to build and install? Yea. That is what I am referring to. Apt's handling of depends also leaves something to be desired.

Why you and the prior poster insist this is a case of me being an Arch Nazi is beyond me. It simply is. There are lots of tools out there that handle source code FAR easier than Apt. Why Debian insists on making the installation from/of source code so difficult is beyond me.

Skripka
October 19th, 2009, 10:37 PM
Synaptic is king. Apt, I'm not so much a fan of. That's why I'm curious about Shaman.

I used to be a fan of Shaman prior to the Vanilla-KDE splitting, which broke Shaman for some time. It still has yet to get back to where it once was IMHO.

Prior to that, Shaman was as slick as Synaptic just about (once you set aside the massive differences in backends).

days_of_ruin
October 19th, 2009, 10:41 PM
Because on some systems, installing code from source is as easy and painless as if it were already in precompiled binaries. I.e. dependency handling etc.

Why you and the prior poster insist this is a case of me being an Arch Nazi is beyond me. It simply is. There are lots of tools out there that handle source code FAR easier than Apt. Why Debian insists on making the installation from/of source code so difficult is beyond me.

But why install from source? It can only be slower and more error prone than installing a pre-compiled program. Also, you never said you were talking about installing from source, but considering that you are an arch user I guess we should all have guessed that.

gnomeuser
October 19th, 2009, 10:42 PM
PackageKit is the most promising idea in packaging frontends right now, backend I would have to say Conary is the most advanced and capable tool. Apt basically is a dinasaur to afraid to look at the doom hurling towards it from above and synaptic is overly complicated, errorprone and poorly designed.

Skripka
October 19th, 2009, 10:43 PM
But why install from source? It can only be slower and more error prone than installing a pre-compiled program.

Because not everything exists in precompiled binaries.



Also, you never said you were talking about installing from source, but considering that you are an arch user I guess we should all have guessed that.


Wah wah wah Arch wah wah. I'm done with you. *ignore list*

SomeGuyDude
October 19th, 2009, 10:45 PM
How is it a PITA, and why is pacman any better? Because someone on the arch forums said?

As said above, the ability to turn any and all source code into dependency/update-handling packages is beautiful. On Ubuntu, if you have software that isn't in a repo, you compile/install. But now it's hard to uninstall, doesn't take care of dependencies, doesn't update automatically. Pacman lets you handle that with the ABS.

Xbehave
October 19th, 2009, 11:29 PM
As said above, the ability to turn any and all source code into dependency/update-handling packages is beautiful. On Ubuntu, if you have software that isn't in a repo, you compile/install. But now it's hard to uninstall, doesn't take care of dependencies, doesn't update automatically. Pacman lets you handle that with the ABS.
apt is fine for source management its just nobody provides repos, but i believe (not on a deb based distro ATM) its apt-source or apt-get install-source is what you need

As for uninstalling packages you've compiled, you just have to get used to doing checkmake (although it will not do dep management unless you enter the details manually), ofc if you are compiling lots of cross dependant programs ubuntu probably isn't the distro for you (if it is learn checkmake/ other deb building tools)

For backend tools, I am a real fan of apt as the others i've used just never seamed as fast (yum extensively and pacman briefly ), and I'm not the only one as apt has been ported to almost everything. For GUI frontends (i quickly migrate to CLI for installing software, it just seams to be the correct interface for the job), I'm quite liking kpackagekit as used by fedora.

RATM_Owns
October 19th, 2009, 11:39 PM
Pacman > Apt

SomeGuyDude
October 20th, 2009, 12:37 AM
apt is fine for source management its just nobody provides repos, but i believe (not on a deb based distro ATM) its apt-source or apt-get install-source is what you need

As for uninstalling packages you've compiled, you just have to get used to doing checkmake (although it will not do dep management unless you enter the details manually), ofc if you are compiling lots of cross dependant programs ubuntu probably isn't the distro for you (if it is learn checkmake/ other deb building tools)

For backend tools, I am a real fan of apt as the others i've used just never seamed as fast (yum extensively and pacman briefly ), and I'm not the only one as apt has been ported to almost everything. For GUI frontends (i quickly migrate to CLI for installing software, it just seams to be the correct interface for the job), I'm quite liking kpackagekit as used by fedora.

I don't think you quite understand what I mean with Apt vs Pacman. You can create a makepkg file in pacman that will track updates and resolve all dependency issues, effectively turning everything into repo-level packaging. Sure it's not the only distro to streamline source installation, but it's the only one I know of that centrally handles it all.

jaxxstorm
October 20th, 2009, 12:51 AM
Pacman > Apt

Oh here we go :popcorn:

Jesus_Valdez
October 20th, 2009, 12:59 AM
I like the part where the flame war starts.

Excedio
October 20th, 2009, 01:35 AM
Dude...what's the deal with attacking someone who uses Arch? He said nothing provocational...

What's the deal with people picking fights for the sake of picking fights? Are people really that bored?

Skripka
October 20th, 2009, 02:06 AM
Dude...what's the deal with attacking someone who uses Arch? He said nothing provocational...

What's the deal with people picking fights for the sake of picking fights? Are people really that bored?

No. A certain camp of UF users gripe and *&^% about every thread turning into an Ubuntu versus Arch thread, and blame the Arch users here...and they CONSISTENTLY prove themselves right, by themselves turning threads into Ubuntu versus Arch. It was really quite funny for a bit, but like lots of things went stale and is now ignore-list worthy.

Xbehave
October 20th, 2009, 02:24 AM
I don't think you quite understand what I mean with Apt vs Pacman.
I don't have access to apt-get atm, so I cant RTM, but how is pacman tracking source pacakges in a pacman repo any different from apt tracking source in an a debian repo. Will pacman rebuild packages for you? (AFAIK apt-source will not do this)

You can create a makepkg file in pacman that will track
Do you create a makepkg file for externally obtained sources (like creating a .dsc)
Or is it something you specify that then uses a subset of files from repos (something that you cant do easily in the debian build system AFAIK)


Sure it's not the only distro to streamline source installation, but it's the only one I know of that centrally handles it all.
portage is the only one that i can think of but AFAIK it isn't used much for binary package management (although it can be)


Dude...what's the deal with attacking someone who uses Arch? He said nothing provocational...
Meh Apt is annoying
I asked him to backup his statement, he did (sort of, no actual details on the differences, yet), there is no trouble here.

edit:

A certain camp of UF users gripe and *&^% about every thread turning into an Ubuntu versus Arch thread, and blame the Arch users here...and they CONSISTENTLY prove themselves right,
It's not like some arch users, post "switch to arch" as a solution to everything...oh wait they do. All i did was ask you to backup your statements with some information, SomeGuyDude is doing that so as i said there is no problem.

Excedio
October 20th, 2009, 02:45 AM
I asked him to backup his statement, he did (sort of, no actual details on the differences, yet), there is no trouble here.

It's not that fact that he was asked to back up a statement, the attack was "did you just read it on some arch forum and thought it would be cool to repeat?"

That was a blatant attack.

I didn't see you attacking other user's opinions... So it's looks like you are simply targeting the Arch user.

Xbehave
October 20th, 2009, 03:01 AM
I didn't see you attacking other user's opinions... So it's looks like you are simply targeting the Arch user.
Nobody else made unfounded provocative statements, attacks non arch stuff (for example, the most widely used linux package manager) often don't come through with facts and can simply be something somebody heard on some blag, like many how many people attack X/openGL/pulseaudio/ubuntu/etc.

kavon89
October 20th, 2009, 04:32 AM
I like pacman for some reason, even if the commands aren't as readable as "apt-get install blah", it's got a much nicer cli.

Frak
October 20th, 2009, 04:41 AM
I voted for FileHippo.

You can say all you want, but when you are able to track updates for a wide range of applications not remotely maintained by you; that application takes the cake for being infinitely useful.

lukjad
October 21st, 2009, 11:43 AM
I voted for FileHippo.

You can say all you want, but when you are able to track updates for a wide range of applications not remotely maintained by you; that application takes the cake for being infinitely useful.
TRAITOR!!! :biggrin:

handy
October 21st, 2009, 11:58 AM
APT/Synaptic is the only contender from Linux..
This is a joke.

Truly!

I'll go & have a look.

If Pacman isn't there then this poll is a joke... :-(

handy
October 21st, 2009, 12:04 PM
I just looked at the poll.

What a limited selection.

Strangely enough Apt is winning at the moment 37% to FileHippo 31%.

They probably should have just said Linux instead of Apt I think...

mivo
October 21st, 2009, 01:03 PM
No PacMan, no vote! ;)

I find Apt rather lacking, but I guess I'll vote for it because the offered voting alternatives are even more inferior. Not sure a poor poll like this deserves any attention at all, though.