This is the way I tweak aptitude: I find it useful, other people found it useful, time to share it.
- Run aptitude
- Options / UI Options
- Disable "Prompt for confirmation at exit" (aptitude saves state, so a quit can perfectly be undone by running aptitude again)
- Enable "Advance to the next item after changing the state of a package"
- Go to "The default grouping method for package views" and remove this
part:
,section(subdir,passthrough),section(topdir)(I find that splitting packages by section adds too many levels between me and the packages) - Go to "The display format for package views" and change it
into
%c%a%M%S %p %d %Z %v %V(I like to see the short descriptions)
Then most of the work I do on aptitude is using l (powerful
filters, like
in mutt) to get to packages, + or _ to install/purge them and the fantastic
^u to have a multi-level undo. ^u in fact allows to play what-if with
package selections: priceless!