---
date: "2001-06-19T08:05:00Z"
title: google "apt-get install"
---

A few interesting things to report.  After months and months of
relentless harassment by
<a href="http://www.snowman.net/">various</a>
<a href="http://mazeone.dcaa.net/">members</a>
<a href="http://www.twistedpath.org/">the</a>
<a href="http://www.linuxbrit.co.uk/">evil</a> 
<a href="http://bma.debian.net/">Debian</a>
<a href="http://www.richlowe.net/">Mafia</a>, I finally
succumbed to peer pressure and installed 
<a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian Linux</a> -- or should I say
*cough* GNU/Linux -- on one of my spare machines.  My initial 
impression is as follows: HOLY CRAP!  The installer is a bit rough,
but once you get past that and get apt properly configured, 
installing and setting up new software is a joke.  It took me about
20 seconds to install Apache (<code>apt-get install apache</code>),
then I realized I didn't have PHP4 installed (<code>apt-get install
php4</code>).  Installing other stuff was about the same.  
<a href="http://www.linuxbrit.co.uk/">Tom</a> walked me through a
dist-upgrade to unstable (more than a bit of a misnomer, I might add).
After years of the untold pain and suffering that is RPM, Windows, and
MacOS software installs, I am completely in awe of Debian Package
management.  I'm sure Debian has it's quirks, but for the moment I'm
completely hooked.  In fact, while I was writing this I just installed
ispell to double-check the spelling of a word.
<br /><br />

The other interesting bit of news for the day is a little shell
script i wrote for accessing <a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a>.
You can grab it <a href="/download/?only=google">here</a>.