installing from remote sources?

[kareila]

Please pardon the newbie question, but I must be missing something obvious!

I tried out my first Ubuntu install a couple of days ago; all my previous UNIX experience has been with LinuxPPC, which used RPM, and NetBSD, which used the BSD package management system.

My understanding of apt-get was that you could type "sudo apt-get install <package>" and it would go out, find the most recent version of the package from its list of sources, and install it for you along with any dependencies (like what CPAN does with Perl modules). But every time I try it, I get some sort of error about the package being missing or obsolete. (The package I was trying to install was emacs, which I'm confident is neither.)

I know it's doing something right, though, because when I type 'emacs' at a prompt it tells me I can use apt-get to install it, instead of just saying command not found.

Is my apt-get syntax correct? Do I need to configure a list of valid sources? Or am I doomed to manually download .deb files and install them manually, same as with .rpm?

Comments

[zvi]

You should double-check that your repositories are set up correctly. I'm working on Xubuntu and have done something very, very bizarre to my menus, or I would offer more help than the relevant man page, but I think that should at least let you see if anything super bizarre is going on.

P.S. that is to say, I don't see anything wrong with your apt syntax. You could try using the gui synaptic, or you can use aptitude which is a command-line program which will allow you to do search. (man aptitude) (Sorry, again, to RTM at you, but I rarely use aptitude.)