remotely loading a new SD image

Yes, aptitude was the program I tried. It comes up with a screen that has the word "Search" at the top row, but how do I get there? No idea.

It shows a list of categories that I can walk with arrows and expand with Enter, but what to do next? No idea.

That is not changing the entire SD card image. Agreed something like that will often work.

nobody likes apt-get even tha man page for apt-get says to use something else

that sounds kind of like aptitude

strange... both dselect and aptitude tell you what keys to press to get to the help screen

One way is use the mouse :) but I expect you want to know how to use the keyboard.

it has the word help on the second row (try pressing "?")

also "C-T" is emacs-eze for "ctrl-T" but you're not expected to know that, it's also on te help page.

try the help page

I think the user interface sucks. The help page has lots of key maps but how are you supposed to understand what the descriptions mean?

When you use YaST in ncurses mode, the only thing you need to know is that you can jump to the yellow colored items using Alt plus the yellow colored item, or use TAB to go around the screen. Space selects a checkmark.

This is like what users know from GUI environments, and indeed in the GUI version of YaST (which is just another skin for the same functions) it can all be done with the mouse.

Those emacs like mappings are not usable for casual users who quickly want to accomplish something.

But it is not my only criticism about debian. More about that later, I have to work now.

?Don?t try this at home?, the second mv will fail as the runtime linker is no longer at the right path.

Ok here some more specific info:

I have been using SuSE Linux, later openSUSE, for a long time. My first version was 6.2 (released in 1999). I used other Linux distributions since december 1992.

I have always been impressed with SuSE. The product comes with a true handbook that really explains how to admin the system. It also is very refined. I installed many versions over the years, and the functionality improves all the time. It was only when I started looking at other distributions lately that I did notice that this is not generic Linux development but specific SuSE activities. (I recently checked CentOS, a Redhat variant, and Raspbian, a debian variant)

A few examples:

- I already mentioned YaST, a system management program that integrates most admin functions including package installation, updating, generic system configuration etc, all in a program that works both in textmode (ncurses) and in graphical mode. So I can also use it on servers with a textmode install and don't have to learn different solutions that work only in one of the modes.

- Some useful aliases. Not the irritating "rm aliased to rm -i" thing. Countless times I have entered "l" on non-SuSE systems, of course later adding the alias l "ls -alF" that SuSE adds by default

- Full intelligent autocompletion enabled by default in bash

- less comes with an intelligent LESSOPEN script that determines the type of the file when opening, and does the required preprocessing automatically. No need for using zless to view .gz files, which then does not handle .bz2 files.

- vim automatically opens my files with syntax coloring enabled, it has editing, history and filename completion in the : command line, and it saves the editing history and buffers between edits. so I can cut some text and paste it in a later session, and when I save a file it remembers te cursor position, so when I go back to a file I am working on it returns me back to the place I was editing.

Those are just some examples of things I have seen evolving over the years I was using SuSE, and I feel put back 10 years in time when trying those other distributions. It is not so bad as in the days of other Unix systems (where commandline editing meant backspacing everything and starting all over again, did you dare pressing

Please don't tell my colleagues at work that nobody likes apt-get, especially the lead engineer. We wouldn't appreciate being called nobodies.

apt-cache search

apt-cache show

aptitude

The first item on the second line at the top of of the page says C-T: Menu If you had pressed the Control and "T" keys ...

Obviously a tool won't do everything you want, easily, until you invest an hour or three in learning how to use it.

But that is especially true for tools like aptitude, emacs or gnu-info and not so much for tools like YaST. That is my point.

Sure, I use "vi". But I learned that 25+ years ago and today I would have the same problem with that. Now the keystrokes of "vi" are wired in my brain and it is difficult for me to use emacs/gnu-info style tools because they work a different way, contrary to my wiring.

With YaST this problem does not occur because it clearly shows on the screen what is available and you don't need a "help" screen that you have to memorize because it will disappear when you acually are going to do something (as it is in aptitude).

Take the "Search" menu as an example. In aptitude it appears there but it is unclear how to access it. In YaST the S appears in yellow (or in bold when you have no color term) and you know that Alt-S will activate it. That is all you need to remember because when you are in another screen, you will see the locally active options and fields with the same highlighted characters that activate them.

That is so much more convenient than a fixed ctrl character mapping... And it works in the GUI version as well, where of course additionally you can click the menu with the mouse.

Also, remember that installing a few of the packages I am missing on a Raspberry Pi in the default install is not my goal in life. It is hardly going to be worth it to invest three hours into learning how to do that, when I am not surrounded by debian systems. Lots of people are missing this point: the inconsistent implementation of package management (and system administration) between Linux distributions is actually costing lots of people lots of time. And probably hindering the deployment of Linux. SuSE spent lots of effort on it to get it right, but this effort has not brought Redhat or Debian any further. The network and mail configuration tool in current Redhat versions is exactly the same as it was in Redhat 5.1 in 1998.

job that you already know how to do. Normally no one is concerned with bulding high level CONSOLE tools to to that job because most computers now have GUIS.

And the tool to run over apt is synaptic, in the gnome environment.

No one actually bothered to MAKE a console tool for apt, because I suspect they either expecetd it to run on a headless server administered by people who could read manuals and knew already what they actually wanted to install or would be running on GUI workstations, where they would expect a GUI front end.

If it bothers you so much, write your own console app. The Pi is not a user friendly toy for windows noobs.

Damn! You're right! /bin/mv is dyanmically linked.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ ldd /bin/mv /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libcofi_rpi.so (0xb6f31000) libselinux.so.1 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libselinux.so.1 (0xb6f03000) librt.so.1 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/librt.so.1 (0xb6ef4000) libacl.so.1 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libacl.so.1 (0xb6ee5000) libattr.so.1 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libattr.so.1 (0xb6ed8000) libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb6eb0000) libc.so.6 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libc.so.6 (0xb6d81000) /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3 (0xb6f3e000) libdl.so.2 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libdl.so.2 (0xb6d76000) libpthread.so.0 => /lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libpthread.so.0 (0xb6d57000)

to work as I suggested, It'd instead have to be a single binary that did all the swapping, or a script in a language where "rename" is a builtin, something beginning with "P"

On 09/10/2013 11:30, The Natural Philosopher wrote: []

Like any other UNIX/Linux/FreeBSD system?

No. Not like any other Unix/Linux/FreeBSD system THAT HAS A GUI ADMINISTRATION.

The latest incarnations of e.g. Linux Mint are out windowing windows frankly.

I can't say I have installed windows since XPP, but frankly Mint is a lot easier than XP ever was.

And quicker.

Both to install and get it into a satisfactory (to me) shape.

less is an interesting hybrid, the command-line uses libgetline which uses emacs bindings while the main windows uses VI bindings.

I looked for a some screenshots of yast, and i see something that looks a bit like the text-mode debian installer or the kernel's "make menuconfig"

How do you know to press alt?

What! no mouse support on the CUI version? that seems kind of primitive :) Aptitude supports mouse, even over SSH, (it doesn't seem to support console (GPM) mouse though, only x-windows terminal mouse)

I always use the hotkeys, I don't bother with the menus any more.

Aptitude doesn't do everything that yast does, it's mainly a multithreaded package manager and dependency solver.

There's some other configuration tools, eg: rcconf to selecting what services you want to run on boot, pppconfig for settigng up PPP.

but nothing that ties them all together.

I've got to agree with that, I try to avoid redhat systems for that reason.

Possibly, windows seems to get by ok without any pacakage management.

There's probably a legal reason for that.

No IPV6 support?

I think you're missing the point - Debian package management tools really aren't as obscure and unwieldy as you're trying to portray them.

I already told you - Ctrl-T opens a menu, then use the arrow keys to move around the menus and menu items, Enter to select. Nothing obscure at all UI-wise.

You don't really need to learn anything to do that - just copy and paste the relevant commands and package names.

Debian was the first distro to implement comprehensive package management tools, so you can't blame them for fragmenting anything.

If you want a unified admin tool for different Linux flavours try Webmin, particularly useful as it can run remotely so you have a graphical front end even for installations without X.

does it do packages?

havent used it in a couple of years..

Nah, apt is the friendly high-level wrapper around dpkg :-)

Yes, but if he wants an equivalent of YaST in ncurses mode, he probably does want aptitude.

Well, that is a gross misjudgment. Most of the Linux servers I manage (running SuSE) do not hava a GUI. And my colocated Pi is managed using ssh all the time. I could run X over ssh, but the packages to do it are not installed I think.

In SuSE Linux it does not matter if you have a GUI or not, because everything is working both in the GUI and ncurses based version of the same tool. So even if you end up having a GUI (e.g. on your workstation), you don't have to relearn everything.

The typical Linux nerd attitude.

We are discussing this in the Pi newsgroup because I started asking if there may be a method to swap the entire SD card image (from Raspbian to openSuSE, for example). But otherwise this discussion is not really related to the Pi, the issues are really the same for Linux on any platform.