Last week, in Part One of this Debian Package Primer, I gave you an introduction to the super cow powers of apt-get, Debian’s package management system. This week, in Part Two, you’ll check out aptitude, which is an easy to use front-end for apt-get. It has menus, shortcuts and a package status dashboard that keeps you aware of your installed packages and how many you have yet to install.

We are pleased to announce yet another Ubuntu-based Linux distribution, this time... with "super powers," called Super Ubuntu. The "super powers" of Super Ubuntu can be translated into the inclusion of applications, tools and technologies that are missing from a standard Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) installation.

aptitude is a featureful package manager for Debian GNU/Linux systems, based on the renowned apt package management infrastructure. aptitude provides the functionality of dselect and apt-get, as well as many additional features not found in either program.

Aptitude is a terminal-based package manager that can be used instead of apt-get. Aptitude marks packages that are automatically installed and removes them when no packages depend on them.

While many believed "aptitude" will soon replace "apt-get" given the fact that it's a lot "smarter", it seems that's not the case in Ubuntu - in fact it's quite the opposite: aptitude has been removed from Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat though it is still available in the repositories.

1) Never use apt-get or aptitude: Apt(itude) is great (it's got supercow powers), but for upgrading use update-manager instead (see the how-to below). Update-manager still uses apt in the background, but additionally fixes common errors, removes old artwork, etc.

On the face of it aptitude, a Debian package manager looks like some RGB monitor and a file manager from Ms-dos.

With the biannual list of the top 500 supercomputers the world over released, the following screenshot of a graph showing the operating systems used in those 500 peta-flop crunching machines, and produced by the University of California Berkeley, makes for an impressive visual glance at Linux’s dominance in Super Computing.

Forget Super Tuesday. Consider Super Friday. Super Friday is February 29, the end of the ISO Ballot Resolution Meeting which will decide the fate of Open XML as an ISO standard.