What is Reddit's opinion of Synaptic?

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Really? After a few times you understand how it works and doesn't require looking up... Its actually really simple.

Also you don't need to run apt from the command line there are GUI apps that can do it for you. There are package managers like synaptic that work well.

Hi ncc386, I'm on Xubuntu 18.04, and---while I don't know how to fix it or why it happens---I can report that I get it too. For me it also says something like "Unable to check for updates" or something.

Whatever it means, it doesn't seem to affect how Software Center works. It also seems to happen to me on first launch. I just close the little popup window and carry on. I can still use Software Center just fine.

P.S. In general I avoid using Software Center for reasons like this. I prefer the <em>Synaptic Package Manager</em> (Synaptic for short) as my GUI package manager . It's been around forever, is much more comprehensive and powerful. It's in the Ubuntu repos, you can install it via Software Center or in the terminal sudo apt-get install synaptic.

This is where I always install/uninstall packages. That Center Software Store I never liked. If I know the commands/name of package. I might install with the terminal commands.

http://www.nongnu.org/synaptic/action.html

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticHowto

ubuntu uses apt....so <code>apt-cache search &amp;lt;term&amp;gt;</code> searches the package database for you (other packages managers have something similar)

This is pretty nice if you have an idea what you search for. But to tell the truth...if I have no clue and just want to explore what is there I prefer a graphical frontend like synaptic and browse all packages by category.

To mention some other package manager:

• dnf: dnf search <term>
• zypper: zypper search <term>
• portage: emerge -S <term> (Though I really, really recommend installing eix on gentoo)

Debian based distro? Have a look at synpatic. Shell is great...but for some tasks I also prefer using a nice graphical tool...and synaptic is pretty powerful as package manager frontend. Doesn't exactly have file manager capabilities..but it for sure makes things easier in some cases and gives nicer formatted overviews than the shell commands. And no reason to abandon the shell tools...I use synaptic in addition. If I want to search for something without exactly knowing what I look for I will use synaptic...if I know exactly the package name shell commands are just faster.

I'm not familiar with Mac, but in Linux you have the Synaptic Package Manager and distro-specific managers like the Ubuntu Software Center.

Synaptic or aptitude will give you all the information you need.

http://www.nongnu.org/synaptic/ (if you do not have a menu item for this, apt-get synaptic)

http://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude (is an ncurses based frontend to apt)