Quoting Trent W. Buck (trentbuck@gmail.com):
Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> writes:
You really should not use both aptitude and apt-get, as they will in that case store separate 'hinting' records, i.e., they don't share that data. Thus, it's better to pick one tool or the other, rather than using both.
That was the case in Debian 6 (and maybe 7). Isn't it fixed as at Debian 8?
viz. apt-mark.
I'd not heard previously about apt-mark. I see that it's a tool to toggle the record about whether a package was installed as result of satifying a dependency or not. Sounds useful, but I'm not seeing how that solves problems inherently caused by apt-get and aptitude keeping separate records. (I could easily be missing something, and will readily confess to carrying forward old practices and prejudices out of habit because they have worked well for many years in the past. I'd feel more awkward about this frame of mind if it weren't for the vast amount of trouble it's helped me avoid encountering.)
I'm guessing the attraction of aptitude for you is its full-screen ncurses mode, reminiscent of dselect's.
See also: http://luv.asn.au/overheads/aptitude/aptitude-intro.html
Very nice overview. My thanks to the presenter (you?). I still prefer apt-get over aptitude, but that's a Religious Question. ;->