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Brief Guide to Working with Synaptic

Synaptic is a graphical interface for the APT package management program. With Synaptic, you can manage package sources (repositories), get information about available packages, install/remove/update packages, and perform keyword searches among available packages.

Running

You can run Synaptic:

from menu of you desktop environment:
- Mate: MATE menu ▷ Applications ▷ Preferences ▷ Synaptic Package Manager;
- KDE: Applicaton Menu ▷ Settings ▷ Synaptic (Package Manager);
- Xfce: Applications ▷ Settings ▷ Package Manager;

from terminal:
```
$ synaptic
```

Before starting, the program will ask you to enter the superuser password:

Synaptic — superuser password request

Immediately after starting, the program window looks like this:

Synaptic — window after starting

On the right side of the program, there is a list of programs with their current status indicated. When you select a package from the list, information and a description about it are displayed at the bottom.

Package source settings

If you have not yet configured package sources (repositories), select the menu option Settings ▷ Repositories. A window will appear with a list of package sources for your distribution:

Synaptic — repos list

Attention! Pay close attention to the source settings! Under no circumstances should you select everything indiscriminately!

For each available repository, several mirrors are specified (e.g., ftp.altlinux.org and mirror.yandex.ru), and three access methods: ftp, http, rsync. Choose the most convenient method for you, such as one that your provider has not blocked, and the fastest server.

Note: The x86_64 type indicates that the repository contains executable programs and libraries compiled for 64-bit systems. If you use a distribution for 32-bit processors, the content type will be i586.

The presence of the x86_64-i586 repository is necessary to support 32-bit applications in a 64-bit system. If such support is not required, the repository is also not needed.

A source with the noarch type provides packages identical for both x86 platforms (not used in the case of arm and armh types). Typically, these are data, non-binary libraries for Perl, Python, etc.