Hari's Software

A small collection of my apps and scripts

Qaptan

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Requirements/Dependencies
Download & Installation

Description

Qaptan (pronounced "captain") is a front-end to simplify the process of configuring APT, the higher level package management system of Debian and Debian-based distributions. Be warned though! This is a powerful GUI that exposes a lot of internal settings of APT that can potentially break your OS installation!

99% of ordinary users will NOT need to touch these settings, but if you do, please be sure to read the manual pages for apt.conf and APT related tools like apt-get, apt-cdrom and apt-cache thoroughly! When in doubt, always export only those settings which you are sure you want to change.

Usage tips/notes

To prevent any option from being exported, use the ambiguous/grayed out state (if it is a check box option) or leave the field blank (if it is a text box field). Using the ambiguous state (neither checked nor unchecked) will prevent that option from being generated in the exported configuration file. This is very useful if you want to configure only a small subset of options and leave the rest to be handled by the APT global defaults.
The exporter also allows you to choose which set of options you want to generate in the configuration file, so choose carefully and wisely.
Never run this tool as root! Don't take the chance of accidentally overwriting any system file with the exporter. The exporter safely prevents you from overwriting or, if it doesn't exist creating the /etc/apt/apt.conf file directly.
The GUI warns you of potentially dangerous settings, but doesn't prevent you from exporting them. Use with care.
Merely saving the settings will NOT touch any system file. It simply generates files under ~/.qaptan/ so that the GUI will remember the settings from a previous session. To revert to default settings at any time, simply remove the folder ~/.qaptan and restart Qaptan.