CHAPTER 29 INSTALLING SOFTWARE Figure 29-4. Before
CHAPTER 29 INSTALLING SOFTWARE Figure 29-4. Before any software is installed by the Synaptic Package Manager, you ll be told what it is and asked to confirm the choice. METAPACKAGES Software such as the GNOME desktop actually consists of a number of programs and system libraries, rather than one single piece of software. Therefore, you might be wondering how, as just one example, you might install the KDE desktop under Ubuntu 5.10. Is it necessary to install each component s package manually? In theory, dependency management should be able to help, and you should be able to select one key part of the KDE desktop system, such as the Konqueror file browser, and have the Synaptic Package Manager take care of the rest. After all, Konqueror will be dependent on other KDE packages. Alas, this rarely works in reality. Installing Konqueror in this way will indeed install much of the KDE desktop suite, but not everything. Konqueror isn t reliant on Kate, for example, which is the default text editor under KDE. Perhaps more important, although the packages will be installed, there s no guarantee that they ll be configured to work correctly as a desktop environment. Metapackages provide the solution. These are packages that contain configuration files to ensure the full range of software is installed and configured correctly, and they also have extensive lists of dependencies that include the complete set of packages for the software in question. (For what it s worth, the metapackage for KDE is kdebase.) Alongside desktop suites, other examples of Ubuntu metapackages include the OpenOffice.org office suite, where the metapackage ensures all the components of the suite can be easily installed, and the X.org graphical subsystem. To see what metapackages are available, simply search for metapackage using the Synaptic Package Manager.