Along the top of the right side of the window are five tabs that give you different views of your system:
Updates: This is the view you will see when you start Ximian Red Carpet. It displays updates to software that you have installed and that is in channels to which you are subscribed. For more information, see Perform Updates.
My Computer: This displays software that is installed on your computer. For more information, see Remove Software on My Computer.
Search: This lets you search the largest possible list of packages: those installed on your system, and those available for installation in all channels. For more information, see Search for Software.
History: This displays a list of actions you have performed in the past. For more information, see View Past Transactions with History.
Pending Actions: This displays a detailed list of upcoming software transactions you have chosen. To perform them, click the Run Now button in the upper left hand corner of the window. For more information, see The Detailed Transaction View.
When you start Ximian Red Carpet it will show you a list of software packages that you can update. An update notice is only shown for software that you already have installed, that is in a channel to which you are subscribed, and for which there is a newer version than what you already have. New software, and new versions of software that you have but that is in a channel to which you do not subscribe, is not part of the update screen.
If you do not see any updates, make sure that you are subscribed to the right channels. See to learn how to adjust channel subscriptions.
Each package is displayed with the following information:
To perform a simple update of software that is already on your system:
Select one or more packages in the list of available updates.
Mark the selected packages for installation by clicking the Mark for Installation button.
Click the Run Now button to have Ximian Red Carpet perform the updates.
To uninstall software that is on your computer now, click the My Computer tab. Red Carpet will display a list of the software that is on your system now.
Select packages for removal and click Mark for Removal or click the space next to the package in the Action column. When you are nished, click the Run Now button, or select another view to choose more transactions.
Each package is displayed with the following information:
Action: The action you are performing on this package.
Channel: The name of the channel in which this package is shipped.
Package: The name of the package.
Current Version: The version number of the software you have installed now.
There are three ways to change the items in the list:
Channel: Choose from the list of channels to show only the software that comes from a particular channel.
Section: Choose from the list of software sections to show only the software of that type. Some channels do not use section divisions.
Text Search: You can also search for a word or word fragment in the packages and their descriptions by typing into the text box above the list of packages.
For this view and for the Search view, you will have the following additional search options:
Search Package Descriptions Check this box to search in package descriptions as well as package names.
Any Words or All Words: Select Any Word for a broad search that matches any of the words you enter in the text box, or All Words to nd only matches that contain all the words you enter.
Substrings or Whole Words: Select Substrings to search for word fragments, or Whole Words to search for whole words only. Package names are rarely whole words, so this is mostly useful for package descriptions.
To look at the broadest possible range of software, and to nd new software to install, click the Search tab. This will not immediately display a list of all available software. You must rst search for the software you want to see. If you really wish to see every available piece of software, enter a blank search in the search box.
To search for software, select one or more criteria for your search. You can choose:
Channel: Narrow your search to a specic channel. If you do not select anything, you will search in all channels to which you are subscribed.
Section: The type of software you are looking for, such as Productivity or Imaging.The default is to search in all sections.
Status: You can search for packages that are not installed, packages that are installed, packages that you have installed but for which a newer version is available, or for packages of any status. The default is to search for packages which you do not have installed.
Text Search: Enter words or word fragments to search for, and press Enter.
The advanced search options are the same as in My Computer. See the Section called Remove Software on My Computer for more information.
In the Search view, each package is displayed with the following information:
Action: The action you are performing on this package.
Status: Indicates whether you have the software installed and if so, whether an update is available. If you do not have the software, the value is listed as not installed. If you have the same version of the software as the one listed, the status will be installed. If you have a different version, the listed package will be described as older or newer than the installed version.
Channel: The name of the channel in which this package is shipped.
Lock Icon: The column with the lock icon indicates whether the package is cryptographically signed.
Package: The name of the software package.
Version: The version number of the package.
The history view displays a list of of your past transactions. That is, each time you install, remove, or upgrade a piece of software, it's recorded here.
The history information is taken from the logs of the Red Carpet Daemon, rcd. It includes transactions made with the rug command line tool, but not changes made with dpkg, apt-get, or rpm.
It displays the following information about each transaction:
Time: The time and date when the transaction occurred.
Action: Whether you upgraded, installed, or removed the software.
User: The user who performed the action. In most cases, this will be root, but you may allow other users to use Red Carpet.
Package: The name of the software package involved in the transaction.
Old Version: For upgrades and removals, this is the version of the software you had installed before the transaction. For installs, this entry is blank.
New Version: For Installs and Upgrades, this displays the version of the software after the transactions. For removals, this entry is blank.
To change the displayed list, you can choose one or more of the following criteria:
Transaction Type: Normally, the History view shows you all transactions. You may choose instead to display just installations, removals, or upgrades.
User: Normally, Red Carpet will show you transactions performed by all permitted users. If you have allowed other users to use Red Carpet, you may choose to display just their actions. If you have not allowed any other users to change the system, the only option here will be All.
Date Range: Normally, Red Carpet will show you the transactions in the last thirty days. You can choose a longer or shorter time frame if you wish.
The left side of the main Red Carpet window shows you a list of transactions you have selected, but it doesn't have room to give you a lot of detail. For more information about your pending transaction list, click the Pending Actions tab.
In addition to the action and package name available in the concise view, the detailed transaction view lets you see see the package version number and the amount of disk space taken up by the package.