I recently gave Debian a try and one thing that surprised me, coming from Arch, is that the tool to install software, apt-get, can't list what software has already been installed. You have to use dkpg to get that information.
Even funnier, I found the answer for that on the Arch Wiki page on Pacmac Rosetta:
Sort of makes sense if you consider the history behind it: dpkg installs software, not apt-get. apt-get, aptitude, etc. are higher-level dependency resolution tools that simply loop in dpkg to actually install packages. dselect is an older tool that did dependencies before apt-get came around.
RPM distros are similar, as they use higher-level tools to do dependencies (yum, zypper, etc.; there was even apt for RPM) and then RPM to actually install the packages and track them.
Admittedly though Debian's command line tools are stuck in the past in this regard, as the user shouldn't need to care about all this. Arch gets this right by putting it all into pacman.
Debian (and Ubuntu etc.) has a tool available that unifies all the many different commands required for administrating and querying the package system. It's called "wajig". I don't believe it's installed by default, though. I rarely see it suggested, probably because whenever people complain about the complexity of the command-line tools, the answer they get is "use the GUI tools".
I don't understand what is surprising or funny about that. It's pure Unix philosophy, different commands within a coherent management system.
The opposite would be the surprising thing, this is not Windows. There are managers that do the whole thing in one single executable that calls others, even with GUIs etc, for dumb people.
No it's not, it's just how things turned out. The different commands have a whole bunch of separate options, and the fact that they turned out to be split upon certain lines isn't a reflection of some "philosophy". (Also, I'm glad you find it so easy to find ways to convince yourself you're not a dumb person.)
Debian is pretty much the only "major" distro that does sensible package management and history shows it just beats the rest at what it does. Other than Debian, I value Slackware because its approach works for what it does. These two make Gentoo and Arch pointless. Ubuntu and Mint work differently and with different goals. I can also rescue Puppy, SLAX, and Stalix. Rest I've tried are basically a waste of time and a result of not knowing what's out there combined with "Not Invented Here" syndrome.
It's helpful to note that "aptitude" could fulfill 99% of the tasks in that "Rosetta" as well (so you could mostly use only a single tool to perform all the required tasks), though I appreciate the fact that they usually provided the lowest-level command to perform the single action.
Comments
I recently gave Debian a try and one thing that surprised me, coming from Arch, is that the tool to install software, apt-get, can't list what software has already been installed. You have to use dkpg to get that information.
Even funnier, I found the answer for that on the Arch Wiki page on Pacmac Rosetta:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_Rosetta
Sort of makes sense if you consider the history behind it: dpkg installs software, not apt-get. apt-get, aptitude, etc. are higher-level dependency resolution tools that simply loop in dpkg to actually install packages. dselect is an older tool that did dependencies before apt-get came around.
RPM distros are similar, as they use higher-level tools to do dependencies (yum, zypper, etc.; there was even apt for RPM) and then RPM to actually install the packages and track them.
Admittedly though Debian's command line tools are stuck in the past in this regard, as the user shouldn't need to care about all this. Arch gets this right by putting it all into pacman.
Debian (and Ubuntu etc.) has a tool available that unifies all the many different commands required for administrating and querying the package system. It's called "wajig". I don't believe it's installed by default, though. I rarely see it suggested, probably because whenever people complain about the complexity of the command-line tools, the answer they get is "use the GUI tools".
Better use aptitude instead of apt-get.
If you want to know which packages are installed: aptitude search '~i'
That command will list all your installed packages and the automagically installed ones will be marked with A.
Honestly, I find Aptitude hard to use. Maybe Pacman has spoiled me.
Yes, Pacman is actually quite easy to use and lacks a lot of historical inconstancies that make tools like apt hard(er).
When I first started using Arch (coming from 'buntu and Debian) I was surprised just how straightforward most of the flags were.
I don't understand what is surprising or funny about that. It's pure Unix philosophy, different commands within a coherent management system.
The opposite would be the surprising thing, this is not Windows. There are managers that do the whole thing in one single executable that calls others, even with GUIs etc, for dumb people.
No it's not, it's just how things turned out. The different commands have a whole bunch of separate options, and the fact that they turned out to be split upon certain lines isn't a reflection of some "philosophy". (Also, I'm glad you find it so easy to find ways to convince yourself you're not a dumb person.)
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/36920/why-do-most-di...
Debian is pretty much the only "major" distro that does sensible package management and history shows it just beats the rest at what it does. Other than Debian, I value Slackware because its approach works for what it does. These two make Gentoo and Arch pointless. Ubuntu and Mint work differently and with different goals. I can also rescue Puppy, SLAX, and Stalix. Rest I've tried are basically a waste of time and a result of not knowing what's out there combined with "Not Invented Here" syndrome.
It's helpful to note that "aptitude" could fulfill 99% of the tasks in that "Rosetta" as well (so you could mostly use only a single tool to perform all the required tasks), though I appreciate the fact that they usually provided the lowest-level command to perform the single action.