Synaptic Error

Here's an example of how things go in Linux, sometimes.

I decided to update my Mepis system. I started up Synaptic, the GUI (graphical user interface) front-end to the apt-get package manager. I clicked on "Reload" and let Synaptic do its thing. I wanted to see what packages were available to be upgraded.

But I keep getting an error message: http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz: Sub-process gzip returned an error code (1)

I couldn't figure out what to do, so I posted a question about it at the MepisLovers forums.

A poster who goes by the name "nlyric" posted a reply:

Try this as root

Code:

rm /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/*

Code:

apt-get update

Now, although I was using the GUI (Synaptic), nlyric gave me a command-line solution. A lot of people are turned off by this type of thing. You ask a question at a Linux forum, and the knowledgeable people there often reply by telling you to run a certain command, instead of telling you what to click on.

I could have opened up the Konqueror file manager, gotten root access, and deleted the contents of the directory /var/lib/apt/lists/partial, then started Synaptic back up and clicked "Reload" again. In the event, I did open up a terminal, typed su and my password to get root access, and ran the first command that he mentioned, which deleted the contents of that directory. Then I went back to Synaptic and clicked "Reload." The error was gone.

My opinion, which is not always popular, is that if you're going to use Linux, you should at least learn a little bit about the command line, even if you're going to use the GUI most of the time like I do. In this case, I understood what the GUI approach would be for running nlyric's commands, so I could go either way.

And, in the end, instead of running apt-get update, I opened Synaptic and clicked "Reload," which does the same thing (except that you don't see the terminal output that you'd see if you ran the command). (I almost always use Synaptic instead of running apt-get commands; just more convenient for me. Other folks take the opposite approach.)