[Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 01:16:11AM +0000, boB Stepp wrote:

> I just now checked on IDLE, found it was not installed, and typed in
> the terminal:
> 
> sudo apt-get install idle3
> 
> The interesting part is since IDLE needs tkinter, it installed that
> dependency as well.  As far as I can tell after typing "help(tkinter)"
> in the Python interpreter, it looks like *all* of tkinter got
> installed.  Is this in fact true?

Indeed. And if Tk/Tcl weren't installed, it would have installed them as 
well. (But they probably were already installed.)

apt-get and aptitude will generally warn you that there are dependencies 
that need installing, and ask you for permission. I've never quite 
worked out why it sometimes just installs them, no questions asked, and 
other times asks first. Possibly something to do with the size of the 
dependencies? E.g. if the dependencies are less that X bytes in size, 
just go ahead and install?

The really amazing thing is when there is a conflict between an 
installed package and a dependency you need. Then aptitude will offer 
you various choices, such as:

- leave the existing package, don't install the new one;

- leave the existing package, install the new one, but not the dependencies;

- remove the existing package, install the new one and its dependencies.


-- 
Steve