Debian Specific Tools

Tools that FVLUG members find useful or "Good Enough".

APT GUI Front ends

For those who prefer "point and click", or intuitive console applications:

Synaptic (aka "Debian's secret weapon"): A very snazzy APT frontend (GTK+ 2.2) - http://www.nongnu.org/synaptic/

Aptitude - a recommended replacement for dselect

Tools to cut down on installation size

localepurge - Gets rid of all the extra translations that come with packages
deborphan - Gives a list of what libraries are not longer being used
debfoster - let's you go through packages one by one, see what packages depend on each, then remove/keep/purge them

Howtos for the package management tools

AptHelp - http://www.spack.org/index.cgi/AptHelp, a bunch of handy commands for Debian sysadmins.

Apt-Howto - http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/

A list of package management tools - http://www.wlug.org.nz/DebianPackageTools

Listing of apt related tools -http://www.wlug.org.nz/DebianPackageTools

More apt related tools and common dpkg switchs - http://www.spack.org/index.cgi/AptHelp

Apt-Pinning for Beginners - http://jaqque.sbih.org/kplug/apt-pinning.html

More advanced Apt pinning: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-apt-get.en.html

How to make your custom packages apt-get'able: http://www.interq.or.jp/libra/oohara/apt-gettable/apt-gettable/

apt-listchanges

This is a handy package in Debian that shows new changelog entries, before a package is installed: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/apt-listchanges.html

Basically it compares the changelog contained within the downloaded *.deb files (in /var/cache/apt/archives) with what has been installed, and reports sorted by urgency.

I have it set up to just email me the changes (not the default), but by tweaking /etc/apt/listchanges.conf you can have it show in STDOUT, in a text pager (eg more or less), or even a web browser. Oh, and confirming (to continue or not to continue is the question).

Yes, much better then what WindowsUpdate does. Actually better then any other OS or distro I've seen. --Wim

debian-goodies

... is a small package containing several handy tools. Check it out. debget and popbugs are neat.