Suggestion for Linux Distro (from PSA: Linux vulnerability)

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2022 at 19:57, Roel Schroeven <roel at roelschroeven.net> wrote:
>
> Op 11/03/2022 om 3:50 schreef Chris Angelico:
> > On Fri, 11 Mar 2022 at 09:51, Cousin Stanley <cousinstanley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >   The following will display a list of lxqt packages
> > >   that are in the repository and available to install ....
> > >
> > >     apt-cache search lxqt | grep ^lxqt
> > >
> > Much faster:
> >
> > apt-cache pkgnames lxqt
> >
> > (apt-cache search will look for "lxqt" in descriptions too, hence the
> > need to filter those out - apt-cache pkgnames is used by tab
> > completion)
> >
> Cousing Stanley's suggestion has the advantage that it also prints the
> short descriptions instead of just the package names. The packages names
> are often a bit too cryptic, I think.
>
> To search only in package names but still show the short description you
> could also --names-only instead of grep:
>
>      apt-cache search --names-only lxqt
>
> or
>
>      apt-cache search --names-only ^lxqt
>
> Chris, when you say "Much faster", do you mean faster to type or faster
> to execute? Your suggestion is certainly faster and easier to type. But
> as for execution speed: on my systems apt-cache search is fast enough
> that I don't really care about its execution time. When listing packages
> that is; tab completion is a different matter, where every delay can be
> quite annoying.

Notably faster to execute on my system. Maybe the difference is
insignificant on yours, but it's highly unlikely to be *slower*. The
speed difference probably depends on how many package repositories you
have, whether you have source packages, etc, etc, etc. (And of course,
whether it's on a hard drive or SSD.)

And what I would *actually* type is "apt i<tab> lxqt<tab><tab>", so
it's quite a lot faster. (I actually had to look up the precise
command.)

ChrisA