I count THREE different ways to install/uninstall programs:
"Add/Remove..." from the bottom of the Applications menu
"Synaptic Package Manager"
"Ultamatix"
I would have guessed that since all three are included in the Ultimate Edition installation that they would somehow communicate with each other. I would, it turns out, have been wrong.
I look at Add/Remove... and see that it has a rather limited set of choices as far as things I can install. It also doesn't list version numbers of the applications so I have no way of telling whether I would be installing a newer, older, or the same version of something that is already installed that Add/Remove... doesn't seem to know IS already installed. Then I try to use it to remove an application that is already installed (being as it's on my menu) and that installed app doesn't even show up in Add/Remove... - so I guess it's flaky on the REMOVE part too
. Although it does have one thing that the other two lack: It lists "popularity" ratings for its limited choice of applications in case I wish to bow to peer pressure and make my choices based on what other people have chosen.Then I try Ultamatix as it seems to be favored by the creator of Ultimate Edition. It immediately asks me something about whether or not I understand that using codecs violate someone's greed or something so I think that it is just a tool to add multimedia to my system. I pass the warning box and see that, no, it has other applications in it too. But, like with Add/Remove..., there is a rather limited amount of applications to choose from. And also like A/R..., with only a few exceptions, there is no listing of version numbers.
It looks like both of those ways will let me install things that are already installed because some things that are installed are not checked in either!
So, I try Synaptic Package Manager. This looks something like the old "pick your applications" part of the Mandrake 8.1 installation that I did several years back. LOTS of choices. Nice helpful descriptions for almost everything. Lists versions of all the choices. Even goes so far as to not only show me if something is already installed, but to also list which version is installed! This I think is great and what a standard should act like. But even Synaptic PM has its issues. It seems that about half of the things that I installed never showed up - or at least not on the menus where I can actually find them. Also, I get an error box when I run it but as it mentions Opera and didn't start until I added the Opera repo to see if Opera has gotten any more tolerable since the last time I tried it (months ago, in Windows), I cannot count that against Synaptic PM as it's my own fault for trying Opera yet one more time. But the part where it doesn't create a menu entry for what I install with it 100% of the time is pretty annoying. It seems that trying again doesn't help; either it adds a menu entry the first time I install an application or it's never going to do it no matter how many times that I try.
I notice that Update Manager and Synaptic Package Manager look like subsets of the same application.
Those are my observations about the three choices for installing/removing applications. If I had to guess, I'd say that the Add/Remove... option is left over from some previous version of the OS/distro/environment/whatever and should itself have been removed since it can't even tell what I've already got installed, and that Ultamatix is something new (as it's got colors and fancy text formatting) but must be still in development due to the limited set of applications and lack of version numbers or listing what is already installed - but that it'll at some point be the one that we should be using. And that Synaptic Package Manager is the one that we are actually supposed to be using NOW since it comes closest to actually working, is aware that it (or something else) has already installed something, lists version numbers of installable application, lists version numbers of installed applications, etc.
If, that is, I had to guess. But I do not wish to guess. I'd like to know which of the three we are actually supposed to use. Also, why there ARE three choices in the first place for something as basic (READ: Even a newbie will have to use one of them - if he/she can figure out which one TO use) as installing/removing applications.
This post is longer than it would have been had I simply typed in "Which out of the three install tools do I use" because I thought it important to list my observations. I'm sure that I'm not the only person that has been wondering what the correct answer to this question is since within minutes of first installing Ultimate Edition the first time.
Thanks in advance for answering this most basic newbie question!
