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Adding missing PPA keys to an apt keyring

Jack Wallen — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:40:14 +0000

If you are a user of a Linux distribution that takes advantage of Launchpad’s Personal Package Archive, then you know how easy that tool can be for adding those hard to find applications pre-packaged for your system. Once you get used to PPAs, it’s fairly easy to depend upon those repositories. But there is sometimes a, seemingly, insurmountable issue with those PPAs – keys. If the key for a particular PPA isn’t given to you, you can’t use the software — not until the key is added to your keyring.

But how do you add the key when you never received it? Believe it or not, there is a simple solution for that task.

I’m going to assume you have the PPA added to to your /etc/apt/sources.list file (or added them with the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chromium-daily.). After the PPA has been added, the next step before the installation of the software, is to run the command sudo apt-get update. If the key hasn’t been added an error will be displayed indicated the key is missing. When that error pops up, that particular PPA can not be used. The error will look like:

GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net lucid Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 2524246B1CC723DB

The clue here is the last string of characters, which is the public key. In order to add the key for this particular PPA (or repository), issue the command:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys KEY_ID

Where KEY_ID is the last string of characters in the error (in this case 2524246B1CC723DB).

When the above command is issued, the following output will be displayed:

Executing: gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /etc/apt/secring.gpg --trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --primary-keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 2524246B1CC723DBgpg: requesting key 1CC723DB from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.comgpg: key 1CC723DB: public key "Launchpad PPA for Chris Coulson" importedgpg:

Total number processed: 1gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1)

The important part of the above output is the final line, indicated that 1 of 1 key was processed. That PPA (or repository) can now be used.

Finding repos and PPA

There are plenty of repositories and PPAs out there. One very good place to start (other than Google) is Launchpad. When you go to launchpad you can search under Registered PPAs, Published sources, Active PPAs, and Published binaries. This site also breaks down PPAs according to release, which includes 6.06 to 11.04. Of course this is a Ubuntu-only site, so those repositories will only work for Ubuntu and distributions based on Ubuntu.

GUI

There is a GUI called gui-apt-key. You can find that in Synaptic (search for “gui-apt-key”, mark it for installation, and click Apply to install.) This tool basically allows you to take the key ID, enter it in a small text area, and push the Add button in order to add a key to your keyring. If you prefer a GUI tool, it’s a good route to go. Personally, I prefer using the command line, as it is more reliable and more flexible.

Final thoughts

Sometimes those apt errors can be a real pain. But when the error is a missing key, there is always a quick solution for adding that key.

Update KDE to 4.5 and experience true improvement

Jack Wallen — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 14:26:26 +0000

For the longest time I have shrugged off KDE 4 because of poor performance. But since 4.4 I have noticed a rather vast leap of the improvement chasm. Now, 4.5 is out and the leap went lunar! That’s right, KDE has finally reached a level of usability and performance that rivals any of its competition (so long as its competition isn’t one of the very light weight window managers, but that’s comparing apples to chocolate chip cookies). For all of those who want to experience this amazing improvement, but don’t want to have to wait until your distribution of choice releases with KDE 4.5 in all its glory, fear not…there is a way.

In this article I am going to show you how to upgrade both Fedora and Ubuntu so that your KDE becomes as snappy and reliable as it was back in the good ol’ days of 3.5.

Before we begin

You will want to make sure that your distribution is fully up to date. So use either your Update Manager or run an update from the command line. Once you have done this you are ready to go.

Adding the repositories

As I said, I am going to be showing you how to do this in both Fedora and Ubuntu. This means we’ll be dealing with apt and yum repositories. The first thing you have to do, in order to make your package manager aware of the new KDE updates, is to edit your repositories. Let’s first do this in Fedora.

For Fedora you will create a new repo file in /etc/yum.repos.d. We’ll call this file kde.repo. The contents of this file will be:

# kde.repo, v2.1

[kde] name=kde mirrorlist=http://apt.kde-redhat.org/apt/kde-redhat/fedora/mirrors-stable gpgkey=http://apt.kde-redhat.org/apt/kde-redhat/kde-redhat.RPM-GPG-KEY #gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-kde-redhat enabled=1

[kde-testing] name=kde-testing mirrorlist=http://apt.kde-redhat.org/apt/kde-redhat/fedora/mirrors-testing gpgkey=http://apt.kde-redhat.org/apt/kde-redhat/kde-redhat.RPM-GPG-KEY #gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-kde-redhat enabled=1

[kde-unstable] name=kde-unstable mirrorlist=http://apt.kde-redhat.org/apt/kde-redhat/fedora/mirrors-unstable gpgkey=http://apt.kde-redhat.org/apt/kde-redhat/kde-redhat.RPM-GPG-KEY #gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-kde-redhat enabled=1

Now, the Ubuntu version is a bit different. Open up a terminal window and issue the command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/beta && sudo apt-get update

With the repositories in place you are almost ready to begin. But first you have an extra step in Fedora.

Enabling the repositories

Figure 1

In Fedora you need to fist make sure you have the repositories enabled before the system will be aware there is an update. To do this click on the start button and then enter “kpackage” in the search string. KPackageKit will pop up. Click on that entry to start up the tool you need.

Within this tool you will want to click on the Settings “tab” (see Figure 1) and then scroll down until you see KDE Testing and KDE Unstable. Check both of those and click Apply. Once you have done that you are ready to check for updates. To do this click on the Software Updates “tab”. You should see numerous updates available, all pertaining to KDE 4.5. You are ready to update.

Updating

You are already in the location you need to be in for Fedora. Click the Select All Updates button in KPackageKit and then click Apply. The update process should now begin.

If you are updating KDE in Ubuntu, from the terminal window, issue the command:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If, however, you are installing KDE for the first time, issue the command:

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Completing the upgrade

Once your upgrade (or install) is complete all you need to do is log out and log back in. You can open up the Dolphin file manager and click Help > About KDE to see that, in fact, you are now running KDE 4.5. Enjoy the experience!

Installing applications in Linux with a double click

Jack Wallen — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:21:13 +0000

For many, the biggest barrier to adopting Linux is the challenge of having to use the command line for too many tasks. One of these tasks, it is though, is the installation of applications. While everyone has seen this is not true of any application installed via the Add/Remove Software utility (which nearly every distribution has), it’s not often seen for applications that are downloaded from the web.

We all know how simple it is to install downloaded applications on the Windows platform. What would you say if I told you it was just as easy to install a downloaded application on the Linux platform? And not just on Ubuntu…but on other Linux distributions. Would you be surprised? Would you be in disbelief? Well, for those disbelievers I have the proof for you today. In this article I will show you how to install downloaded applications, in Linux, with a double click.

What this applies to

Before you think this is going to show you how to install an application from source with a double click, think again. This will only apply to the packages created for a systems package manager. What that means is you can install .deb files in an apt-based (or dpkg-based) system (such as Ubuntu) or .rpm files in an RPM-based system (such as Fedora). If you are wanting to install from source, you will have to employ the command line tool. For the rest…you are just a double click away from installation goodness.

The dependency issue

There can, of course, be issues with this installation. The biggest issue will be dependencies. If a file you are attempting to install has unmet dependencies it will not install. When this happens you can try to meet those dependencies by using your Add/Remove Software tool. Or you can attempt to download the dependency files (after googling them and finding the right version) and install in the same way you are going to install the main application. This is one of the many reasons why it is always best to use your package management system. There are, of course, times when you need a package installed that it not in your package management system and there are no repositories for that tool. That is when this method will come into play.

How it works

Believe it or not, it works in much the same way as it does on the Windows platform. Let’s see just how this works. I am going to install a package (one that I will writing about very soon) called Hot Copy. For that tool I have downloaded the .zip file (which contains binaries in both .deb and .rpm format. That file will have downloaded to my ~/Downloads directory. Here are the steps for installation (I will be explaining this from the GNOME desktop).

Step 1

Open up Nautilus to the ~/Downloads directory. In this directory you will see the .zip file you downloaded.

Figure 1

Step 2

Double click on the newly downloaded file. This will open up the archive file to display all of the contents. In the case of this file there will be two directories and a help file. The two directories will be for each of the different hardware architecture (x86 for 32 bit systems and x86_64 for 64 bit systems). Double click on the directory for your machines architecture to reveal the included installation files (see Figure 1).

Step 3

Figure 2

For the Ubuntu installation I am going to install both .deb files in this package. First I will double click the hotcopy .deb file. When I do this it will open up the GDebi package installation tool. When this new window opens (see Figure 2) all I have to do is click the Install package buttton. GDebi will ask for the users password to complete the installation. You might recognize GDebi from any time you have downloaded a .deb file from the web. it’s the same routine.

When the installation is complete GDebi will report the installation is finished and you can then close the progress window and then close the GDebi window.

That’s it. And, believe it or not, the process is pretty much the same on the Fedora distribution as well.

Final thoughts

I bet you never thought installation applications in Linux was this easy. Well, Linux has come a long, long way since the early days when the command line was a requirement. Now, it seems, the command line is only an option. Although I can’t imagine myself using Linux without the command line (it’s how I was taught after all), it is completely possible to do so.

Helping your latest Linux release work with media

Jack Wallen — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:18:47 +0000

I thought I’d take a bit of a break from the desktops (we’ll come back to a new alternative desktop soon) and help the users out with getting both Ubuntu 10.04 and Fedora 13 working with some of the popular media types. This is a crucial chapter in a users life with Linux as we all know that multi-media is a bit part of using a computer. And now that the latest releases play well with just about every type of device you can imagine, it’s important that they be able to play well with those devices media.

So in this article I am going to discus how to install the necessary codecs to get these media types running in both Fedora 13 and Ubuntu 10.04.

A necessary proclamation

Unfortunately Linux is hindered by licensing issues. This is why you will be hard-pressed to find a major distribution that ships with pre-rolled in MP3 support. It’s frustrating, but it’s a reality when dealing with licenses. Does that mean you have to go without listening to MP3′s and other file formats? No. You can still enjoy them, you just have to install support for those tools yourself (or allow the system to install them).

Auto-install

This is especially true for Ubuntu 10.04. When you try to use a new media type in one of the players (such as Rhythmbox or Banshee), Ubuntu will attempt to install the necessary files, applications,. and/or codecs in order allow that media player to work with said multi-media file. This works most of the time. It’s only during those occasions which it doesn’t work that will have you frustrated because you can’t use that multi-media. Fear not.

Figure 1

Fedora 13

There is a very simple tool, called AutoX (by Dangermous – no relation to the famous cartoon character), that you can use to install nearly any codec for Fedora 12 and 13 in both 32 and 64 bit versions. You can install it with the commands:

rpm -Uvh http://dnmouse.org/autoten-4.7-2.fc13.noarch.rpm

After you install, you run this with the command autoten as the root user. If you do not have all of the necessary dependencies, it will install them at first run. Once running you click on the button for the codec you want and it will install (see Figure 1). Very simple.

Ubuntu 10.04

With Ubuntu 10.04 you will have to issue a few commands to get your codecs installed. Before you run those commands you need to add repositories to apt. The command to add those repositories is:

sudo wget –output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list

Now issue the command:

sudo apt-get –quiet update

Finally the next two commands will finish up the job:

sudo apt-get –yes –quiet –allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring

sudo apt-get –quiet update

You are ready to install the codecs. I will just list them out for you.

Non-free codecs: sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs

DVD support: sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 libxine1-ffmpeg gxine mencoder

Hopefully, after running the commands above, you should the codec you need installed OR now Ubuntu 10.04 should be able to auto-install any codec you need.

Final thoughts

Thanks to licensing issues it’s not a perfect world for Linux and multi-media, but it is getting close. With tools like you have above, getting your distribution up and running with multi-media isn’t all that challenging.

KDE releases final bugfix version of 4.5

Jack Wallen — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:34:40 +0000

If you are a user of KDE then big things are happening in your world. The development team has released the SC (Software Compilation) version of 4.5 which means this is the final bugfix version. The feature freeze has already happened so you know this release means it’s nearing in-the-wild stability. But why should you be excited about KDE 4.5? This isn’t the big leap from 3 to 4. No it is not…but it is a milestone in that this release finds numerous improvements over an already improving desktop.

Has KDE 4 reached the point where it is poised to reclaim its throne as the desktop for the Linux masses? Has 4.x shaken off the buggy, slow stigma that has been plaguing it since it rose out of the fiery 3.x ashes? In this article I am going to highlight some of the new features and fixes you will find in 4.5 and show you how you can install this desktop so that you can draw your own conclusions. NOTE: Public release of KDE 4.5 is set for this August.

Features

Many of these “new” features were really new in the RC candidate (which was the release prior to the SC release). But, since this release actually contains no “new” features, I will include them here.

Figure 1

Reworked notification area: Prior to this release, the KDE 4 notification area was out of place and buggy. Now it actually looks like it belongs on the KDE 4 panel (see Figure 1). Using a new D-Bus based protocol the notification area has a much more uniform look and interacts much better with the desktop as a whole.

KWin Tiling: This feature allows you to automatically place windows next to one another. This might seem a bit similar to a feature that was brought to Windows users in Windows 7. This feature is pretty sweet. Drag a window to the left side of your screen and it will automatically resize itself to fit the left half of your desktop. Drag another window to the right side of your screen and it will automatically resize itself to fit the right half of the desktop. Drag a window to the top of the screen and it will resize itself to fit the entire desktop.

Advanced graphic effects: It is now possible to blur the background of translucent windows as well as numerous smaller improvements in the area of desktop effects make KDE 4 a much richer graphical experience.

WebKit: If you prefer the WebKit HTML rendering engine over the current Konqueror rendering engine, you’re in luck. With KDE 4.5 you can now switch Konqueror to WebKit.

Qt 4.7: The upgrade to the latest Qt brings to KDE 4.5 fare more speed than any of the updates have offered to date. KDE 4 now seems like it’s not hindering performance on your desktop.

Bug Fixes

As I mentioned, this release was about bug fixes. From what I have read the total number of bugs squashed in moving from 4.4 to 4.5 have been quite numerous. And it shows. The speed and stability increase is noticeable. In this most recent release you will find bugfixes for:

Konsole: Refreshing and encoding bugs.
Ocular: Several bugs that lead to Ocular (PDF viewer) crashing.
KDE PIM Alarms: Numerous fixes.
KDEUI: Optimizations and bugfixes.
KDE Accessibility: Bugs fixed in KMouseTool.
ARK: Numerous bug fixes including RAR fixes and several path fixes..

The list of bugs above is not complete, nor does it look like a list of bugs that would bring about speed increases and stability. Taken as a separate entity they would do little to bring about stability. But in conjunction with the other numerous bug fixes and improvements that have been rolled into what will become KDE 4.5, it all comes together for a much improved experience.

Installing

Installation on Ubuntu is simple. Just follow these steps:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/experimental
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

For installation on Fedora follow these steps:

Add this repo to your current list of repositories.
yum groupupdate kde-desktop
yum update

The verdict so far

I have been using the latest development release of KDE 4 and I have to say from KDE 4.4 to KDE 4.5 there have been massive improvements. No longer do you feel like you are working with a sluggish, crash-prone desktop environment. Now KDE is starting to develop the stability and speed associated with the GNOME desktop. If you were a fan of KDE 3.5 and hated the idea of updating to the less stable 4.x, you will happy to know that KDE 4.5 will bring about the same level of stability and usability you once knew.

Keep your Linux system up to date with KPackageKit

Jack Wallen — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:05:37 +0000

As you have most likely seen on Ghacks, there are numerous ways to keep your Linux distributions up to date. There are new systems available such as the Ubuntu Software Center (see my article “The new Ubuntu Software Center“) that make installing software a piece of cake. But even with applications such as the USC in place, there is still a need for other systems. Take, for instance, the USCs inability to install more than one package at a time…this is a big issue within the Linux community. Add to that the fact that there are many Linux users who prefer to stick with older, more proven technologies, and you can see why other installation tools remain.

One of those tools is PackageKit. PackageKit is a background service charged with updating and installing software on your computer. But because PackageKit itself is just a background service, it requires a front end so that end users can take advantage of the system. One very powerful front end is KPackageKit. KPackageKit is the KDE front end for PackageKit, whereas Gnome PackageKit is the GNOME front end (see my article “Installing applications in Linux with GNOME PackageKIT.”)

One of the things I like about KPackageKIT, over the Ubuntu Software Center, is that it can not only install applications, it can update your already installed applications. But unlike USC or Synaptic, you will have to know the name of the software package in order to find it. KPackageKIT does not show all software available. Instead you start up the tool with a blank slate and search for what you want to install. You can search by:

Description.
File name.

But you can also apply various filters to your search. Included search filters are:

Collections.
Installed.
Development.
Graphical.
Free.

Let’s take a look and see how software is installed with KPackageKIT.

Starting KPackageKIT

Figure 1

You can start the application two ways: Command line or from the menu. To start from the command line hit F2 to open the run dialog and enter the command kpackagekit. To start the tool from the KDE menu click on the menu, click on the Computer tab, and then click on the KPackageKIT entry (see Figure 1).

When KPackageKIT starts what you will see is a fairly simple interface (see Figure 2). From this window you are able to:

Install software.
Update your system.
Configure KPakcageKIT.

Figure 2

Let’s install the Scribus DTP tool as an example. Follow these simple steps:

Select Software Management.
Open up KPackageKIT and enter “scribus” (no quotes) in the search area.
Click the downward-pointing arrows of the software(s) you want to install.
Click Apply.
When the new window appears, click Install Now.
If dependencies are necessary, OK them.
Enter your sudo (or root – depending upon your distribution) password.
Wait for the installation to complete.
Click OK to dismiss the window.

Updating your system with KPackageKIT is just as simple. Follow these steps:

Open up KPackageKIT.
Click on the Software Update section.
If there are updates available, either select the updates you want to run or click the Select All Updates button.
Click Apply.
Enter your password.
Wait for the update to finish.
Click OK to dismiss the window.

Configuration

From within the Configuration section there are a minimal number of options to configure. The primary configuration to take care of here is adding new software sources. To add a new repository follow these steps:

Click on the Settings section.
Click the Edit Software Sources button.
Click on the Other Software tab.
Click on the Add button.
Enter the complete apt line for the source (not just the address).
Click OK to dismiss the address window.
Click Close to dismiss the Software Sources window.

If you manually edit your /etc/apt/sources.list (or your Yum repository file – depending upon your distribution) these changes will appear in KPackageKIT.

Final thoughts

Although not perfect, KPackageKIT is certainly a viable solution for Linux software installation. If you need a simple KDE-based means of installing software, and do not want to use the command line, this tool might be just what you need.

Create your own mobile Ubuntu repository with APTonCD

Jack Wallen — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:52:45 +0000

How many times have you installed Linux, tweaked it to perfection with various applications, only to have something happen and you have to re-install. Or you get that machine up and running with all the goods and then want to re-create the system on another machine. In either of these situations, the last thing you would want to do is to have to remember all of the applications and then spend the time to download them all again.

Well, there’s a handy tool that will take care of all of that for you. The tool is called APTonCD. What this tool does is create a CD with all of the applications you have installed – basically a portable repository. And, with the same tool, you can restore all of the packages on the CD – all from one convenient GUI.

Features

Choose specific packages on your local machine (or choose all).

Download entire repositories.

Burn CD/DVD from within APTonCD.

Create and restore from same GUI.

Auto-selection of dependencies option.

Easy to use.

Installation

The installation is simple:

Open up your Add/Remove Software Application.
Enter “aptoncd” in the search bar (no quotes).
Mark APTonCD for installation.
Click Apply.

Once the installation is complete you can close out the installation tool and get ready to use APTonCD.

Starting and using APTonCD

Figure 1

Once installed APTonCD is found in the Administration sub-menu of the System menu (GNOME desktop). Figure 1 shows the main window for the application. From this window you can either create a new CD or restore from an already existing CD.

To create a new CD click the Create button which will open up another window. In this new window (see Figure 2) the packages will be collected and, eventually, listed out for you. From this listing you can select the packages you want to include on your CD. By default all of the packages are selected.This window will also includ the total size of the completed installation. As you can see (in Figure 2) the total size of my restore CD will be 596 MB (some of the packages are not selected).

Figure 2

If you want to add packages not already on your system you can click the Add drop down and select either Packages or Folder and then navigate to those files/folders. You can also open up Nautilus and drag and drop packages into the APTonCD window.

Once you have selected all of your packages you might want to go to the Edit menu and select “Auto-select Dependencies” to ensure all dependencies are met on your CD. Now it’s time to burn. When you’re ready click the Burn button which will open up a Disc Properties window (see Figure 3). In this new window you select your medium, the destination for the image file, a file name, and whether or not you want to create a meta-package. The meta-package is one package that

Figure 3

includes all packages on the CD as dependencies. This makes restoration very simple in that all APTonCD has to do is select one package to install.

When you click Apply APTonCD will begin to create the .iso image that you will then burn onto disk using your favorite CD burning software.

When the iso has been created a new window will open asking if you want to burn the CD/DVD. This window will allow you to select that application you want to burn with. If you chose you can click No and burn the CD/DVD later. I have found the burn portion of the APTonCD to be a bit flaky, so I just always burn by open up K3B and burning the image.

Restoring

I would like to say that APTonCD can easily handle the installation of your packages with a simple click of a button. It can not. What APTon CD does is create portable repositories. So you can use the APTonCD restore option to basically add your CD repository for installation. I have found, however, the best way to install the entirety of the packages is with the tried and true command line. This allows you to quickly get all of your packages installed with a couple of easy commands. What you will want to do is this:

Insert your CD/DVD created by APTonCD.
Open up a command line.
Change to the directory where you CD is located with the command cd /media/cdrom (Note: Your CD might be located in a different directory).
Change into the packages directory with the command cd packages.
Issue the command sudo dpkg -i *deb which will install all packages on the CD.
After the installation is complete you MIGHT have to use Syanptic in the event their are broken packages.

Close out the command prompt and check your Applications menu, you should be good to go.

Final thoughts

I hope that the developers of APTonCD will some day make it much easier to restore from the GUI. But even with the inconvenience of having to use the command line for quick restoration, APTonCD is a very handy tool.

Installing Linux applications with Aptitude

Jack Wallen — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:37:31 +0000

For those of you who like a little more power behind your tools you will certainly appreciate the Aptitude front-end for the apt package management system. Aptitude is based on the ncurses computer terminal library so you know it’s a pseudo-hybrid between console and gui. Aptitude has a powerful search system as well as an outstanding ncurses-based menu system that allows you to move around selections with the tab key and the arrow keys.

But don’t think, when you fire up Aptitude, you are going to be greeted with a sexy graphical front end. No. When you start up this application you are going to be teleported back into the mid-90s when front-end applications were just arriving onto the scene. But Aptitude is so much more than that. Aptitude is a powerful tool to help you use the apt package management system.

To open Aptitude you need to first open a terminal emulator (such as aterm, gnome-terminal, or konsole). I will warn you, if you are like me and use Aterm in full-blown transparency Aptitude might look at little strange. So instead you should fire up another terminal or use Aterm without transparency.

To start up aptitude you will need root or sudo access. Using sudo you would start Aptitude like so: sudo aptitude.

Aptitude Main Window

There are two main sections to focus on. First is the main window. This is where you will see a listing of the what is available. As you can see from the image above there are upgradable packages, new packages, etc. What you don’t see is the Aptitude menu. To access this menu you have to hit the Ctrl-T combination (that is the Control key plus the “t” key at the same time.) When you open up the Aptitude menu you navigate this menu using the arrow keys.

Aptitude Menu

Before you actually get into installing packages with Aptitude, you have to select packages to install. You do this outside of the menu in the main window. Without the menu open you can move up and down the window entries with the arrow keys. When you land on an entry you want to expand you hit the Enter key. Let’s install something.

Using the arrow keys move down to the “Not Installed Packages” entry and hit Enter. This will expand to reveal a number of sub-menus. Now scroll down to the Net sub-menu and hit Enter. Yet another sub-menu will appear containing three entries. Move to the “main” main entry and hit Enter to reveal all of the possible applications to install.

Network Applications Available

Let’s install Gobby (a text editor/source editor that can do online collaboration). With the arrow keys move down until you see the Gobby entry. When you find Gobby hit the Enter key which will reveal all of the gory details behind Gobby.

Gobby details

This should tell you everything you need to help you make the decision to install or not to install Gobby. Let’s install it.

To select an application for installation hit the “+” key (you do have to use the Shift key for this) to mark the package for installation. Now hit the “g” key and the installation process should begin. Don’t be fooled when it seems as if Aptitude has dropped out of ncurses mode and is in full console mode, it will return to it’s ncurses glory when after you hit the Enter key when prompted (after installation is complete.)

When installation is complete you will return to the description of the package you just installed. To go back to the main window you can open up the menu (Ctrl-t) and then using the right arrow key go to the View entry. Using the down key select “Prev” to go to the previous screen. You can also hit F7 for this same action.

And there you are, you have just installed an application with Aptitude. Of course Aptitude is much more powerful than this. In later articles we’ll discuss searching, upgrading, removing, and much more with Aptitude.

In the mean time, have fun installing with Aptitude!