dselect Documentation for Beginners
Chapter 4 - Glossary

The following terms are useful to you in this document and in general, when talking about Debian.

Package

A file which contains everything needed to install and run a particular program.

Debian package names have the .deb suffix. Each package has a name and a version. The version consists of the real version (`upstream') and the Debian revision, separated with a hyphen (`-').

Here are some example package names:

• efax_08a-1.deb

• lrzsz_0.12b-1.deb

• mgetty_0.99.2-6.deb

• minicom_1.75-1.deb

• term_2.3.5-5.deb

• uucp_1.06.1-2.deb

• uutraf_1.1-1.deb

• xringd_1.10-2.deb

• xtel_3.1-2.deb

dpkg

The program which handles packages is dpkg. dselect is a front end to dpkg. Experienced users often use dpkg to install or remove a package because it's quicker.

package scripts, maintainer scripts

The programs (usually shell scripts) that dpkg runs before and after installing each package. They are usually quiet, but some of them can display warnings or ask you questions.

dselect Documentation for Beginners