Can I open .debs with Synaptic in 11.10?

Question

Ubuntu Software Center is very slow here.Seriously, Windows virtual machines run faster that that here!

I dislike Software Center so I installed Synaptic ages ago, and that loads in 2 seconds! Perfect. Well almost - I can't seem to open downloaded .debs with it. Can I change things so that Synaptic opens .debs by default?

Is it possible to remove Software Center completely and replace it with Synaptic?

Try deepin software centre .It is much better than ubuntu software centre .It have an built in update manager — Tachyons, Mar 15 '12 at 07:28

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 15 '12 at 07:49

6

You open downloaded debs with gdebi

It is not installed by default, so use this command to do so

sudo apt-get install gdebi

To make it default for deb handling, follow these steps

Right click on any .deb file and click properties

Go to the Open With Tab

Select Gdebi Package Installer and click Set as default

As for software center, you can safely remove it by the following command:

sudo apt-get remove software-center

and you can use synaptic for the GUI installation of packages from the repos

answered Mar 15 '12 at 07:49

Amith KK

13,412

Thank you Amith KK. And thank you to everyone for the most helpful and interesting replies. – dunderhead Mar 15 '12 at 10:18
@dunderhead no problem. That's what the community is for :) – Amith KK Mar 15 '12 at 16:18

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 15 '12 at 07:18

0

As for your first question - for installing a .deb file I personally prefer the command line by executing sudo dpkg -i file.deb. It's much faster than both Software Center and Synaptic and you can install multiple packages at once (e.g. sudo dpkg -i *.deb).

You can remove Software Center but why would you? Leave it there and don't use it. Sometimes I find it very useful for searching for an application I need and see its ratings.

answered Mar 15 '12 at 07:18

yossile

5,728

The trouble with dpkg is that it does absolutely no dependency resolution and can result in broken packages. gdebi is much better IMO, and has a CLI tool too. – detly Mar 15 '12 at 07:30

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

If you want to install packages by synaptic that already downloaded, You can use this method, You can copy the downloaded packages to the /var/cache/apt/archive directory. Then open synaptic and search for your package and install it. However you can't copy anything to that directory unless you are the owner of the directory (You may be the administrator but not the root) then you have to make permissions (I usually log into the root account and copy those packages) you can copy packages through the terminal. See this link for changing permissions, below screen-shot is the permissions tab of the Archive Folder

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Can I open .debs with Synaptic in 11.10?

3 Answers3