GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
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Package Basics

Debian distributions are based on over 4400 packages. Your task is to select those you wish to install! This is made easier with task packages which are virtual packages that depend on a collection of other packages. Selecting one of these task packages results in that collection of other packages being installed. An example is the task-tex package that will install the TEX and L^ATEX packages and related utilities.

Task packages are presented to the user on an initial install. As the name indicates a task package is intended to deliniate a specific task you might use a computer for, like a web server, an X workstation, or perhaps an X workstation using Gnome or KDE.

Individual packages can be installed and updated using wajig as described in Chapter 6.