Running Linux, 5th Edition - Matthias Kalle Dalheimer [225]
The main window of KPackage displays a list of all the packages available for your system on the left, with a box to the right; when you choose a package in the list, the box to the right includes information about the package you selected. You can install or uninstall packages by selecting them and choosing Install or Uninstall from the Packages menu, or by clicking the column labeled Mark to place a check mark next to them and then clicking the "Install marked" or "Uninstall marked" buttons. You can also install .deb packages directly by clicking the Open button on the toolbar to the left of the screen and selecting the file, or dragging .deb icons from KDE file manager windows into KPackage's window. KPackage also has tools for finding packages with particular names. Like all KDE applications, KPackage has help available by pressing F1 or using the Help menu.
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[*] Some RPM-based distributions now include apt as well because apt was designed to work with any packaging format.
[†] Some other Linux commands, such as cvs, also act this way.
[*] Note that apt-get does not install packages directly from .deb archives; dpkg's --install option should be used instead for an archive that you have in a .deb archive on disk or have downloaded directly from the Internet. When using dpkg, you will need to resolve the dependencies yourself.
Automated and Bulk Upgrades
Nearly every distribution now includes a convenient update mechanism. SUSE ships one as part of YaST, and Red Hat uses an application called up2date that connects to the Red Hat Network. Debian, of course, has the apt-get utility described in the previous section. There are other tools out there, but you'll have to install them first. Usually there's no reason to go to all that trouble.
Figure 12-1. KPackage package manager
The update systems are designed to be ultra-simple and therefore are mostly intuitive to use. We will briefly introduce two here: YOU, which comes from the SUSE world, and ZENworks, which comes from the Red Hat world.
YaST Online Update: Automated Updates
YOU ("YaST Online Update") is SUSE's automated update tool. The service is free to use (i.e., it is not a subscription-based service). You run it whenever you feel like it (but doing it regularly might be a good idea if you plan to use such a tool at all). YOU is integrated into the YaST system administration tool; in the Software section, you'll find the Online Update icon. Click this, and the online update screen will appear. At first it is empty, because it needs to load the list of available servers. This can change dynamically over time. You can browse the drop-down list "Installation source" to choose a location that is close to you network-wise.
If you check the checkbox Manually Select Patches and click Next, you will, after a period of time during which the list of updated packages is loaded, be taken to another page (see Figure 12-2) where you can select the packages to update. Those updates that are relevant to you (in other words, that apply to packages you have installed) are already checked. It might still be a good idea to browse down the list, though, because YOU even gets you some packages that are, for legal reasons, not on the installation media. For example, the package fetchmsttfonts lets you download and install TrueType fonts provided by Microsoft (isn't that ironic?). Drivers for various WLAN cards are another example of packages that are only available via the online update. Because these do not update existing packages, they are never checked by default initially, so you may want to choose the manual update selection at least once and check them.
Figure 12-2. Manual package selection in YOU
If you do not check the Manually Select Patches box, the update selection step will be skipped, and the update will be performed immediately.
Another nice little gadget that comes with YOU is the SUSE Watcher. This is a panel applet for your KDE desktop that monitors the