Beginning to use Ubuntu: Synaptic Package Manager

There are many applications for Ubuntu, so many in fact that I doubt anyone knows all of them. That said, i’d like to point out some user-friendly applications that I use daily, and most windows users would find appealing, at least in concept. I’m going to cover some of them over a series of tutorials, and the first one will be the tool we use in Ubuntu, or any Debian-based Linux Distribution to install and update software.

Synaptic Package Manager

Synaptic is a repository-based software installation and update tool. To say it simply, it’s a single program that connects to a server that holds the “instructions” for installing any application within it’s repositories (which numbers in the millions depending on which repositories you use and how many). Not only does it give you easy access to find and install software the easy way in Ubuntu or any Debian-based Linux Distribution, but it checks against the versions of the applications you have installed, and allows you to keep them up to date with a couple mouse clicks.

No more surfing through the web looking for an application to meet your needs when you can open a program, click on “search” and find what you need. I used to spend hours looking for a Windows app that didn’t cost me much to perform “X” task, but I haven’t done that for a computer in ages because this little tool negates the need.

1. If you have Ubuntu already  installed or want to run Ubuntu Live (you can download Ubuntu and run it from the CD, similar to a demo), click on “System” then “Administration” and then you should see Synaptic Package Manager. You’ll have to type in your superuser password (usually this is the password for your user account). The application will launch and you’ll see some buttons to your top left.
2. I usually click “Reload” to make sure my package lists are up to date, then I click “Mark All Updates” to keep all my installed software with the latest version.
3. If you’re looking for new software you can either search through the sections or use the very functional search utility. To navigate with the mouse to the search tool, click Edit, then Search or use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+F. You can search using description, program name, keywords or many other means. For some examples type “mp3″ or “DVD” to search for applications related to this. A more direct example is to type in the word “gthumb” and you’ll find a handy little image viewing and simple editing tool.
4. once you’ve found an application you wish to install (in the direct example above, “gthumb”) right click and select Mark for Installation. Any dependencies necessary for the program to run should be found and added to the installation tasks. It may ask you to confirm, and usually you should be able to click Apply in the dialog window.
5. Once you’ve selected any applications or upgrades you’d like  to do, click the Apply button in the large toolbar in the main synaptic window. It will open a window showing the tasks it’s about to perform and if all is to your satisfaction, click Apply.
6. Now’s the easiest part. Kick back while it’s downloading the packages to install. If you’re curious you can click Details and watch each package’s download progress.
7. When all the packages are downloaded, you’ll see the packages installing and again if you’d like to check out the technical aspects click Details.
8. When all is done, you’ll be returned to the main window of Synaptic. If there is a problem during the download (a package wasn’t retrieved) it will ask if you wish to continue. This can happen if your connection to the server was disrupted (or your internet service was disrupted). If this happens, I would recommend you click “no” when it asks you if you want to continue anyway. This isn’t often but as Ubuntu  is becoming more and more popular, those servers are getting a lot of traffic.
9. If there’s ever an incident with the installation (usually a package fails to completely install due to a missing dependency or a conflict with other packages) just read which package is causing the problem and usually the backend (called apt-get) will tell you how to resolve it.

I’ve included screen shots so those of you unfamiliar with Ubuntu can actually see the screens I’ve been talking about. I’m going to try and do this with all of the tutorials planned in this series.

For those of you who are Ubuntu users already, congratulations! You may already be familiar with this process, but it’s always nice to see tutorials like this. My purpose in writing this isn’t to expose existing Ubuntu users to Ubuntu experiences but non-Ubuntu users or new users.

Enjoy your experiences, and hope this helps!

-Drew-

Synaptic Screen Shots