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dunderhead
Asked: 2012-03-15 23:09:31 +0800 CST

Can I open .debs with Synaptic in 11.10?

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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?

software-center

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    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

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  2. 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.

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  3. 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

    enter image description here

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