The Awesome APT Package
The first package I would recommend everyone to install is APT 6 Transitional (deb file here).
Note: you could install .deb packages by using the dpkg -i <path-to-deb-file>
command.
Once you’ve done that, you can start playing with apt-cache
and apt-get
.
Here is a list of commands that I find incredibly useful:
apt-get update
: to refresh sources
apt-cache search <package-name>
: to search for packages containing <package-name>
and show their descriptions
apt-cache pkgnames <pkg-prefix>
: to search for packages with names starting with <pkg-prefix>
apt-get -d install <pkg-identifier>
: to download the package .deb file to /var/cache/apt/archives/
At any rate, you could always use the --help
flag to bring out the full list of commands, but I present you with a more comprehensive list below: (thanks to this reddit post by u/Secretss)
Cache
apt-cache stats
to show statistics about your all sources combined, including number of packages
apt-cache pkgnames
to list all available packages; will take a while and may pause halfway while cataloging on-screen
apt-cache pkgnames com.package.name
to list packages starting with PackageName; doesn’t show descriptions
apt-cache search com.package.name
to search for packages containing PackageName and show their short descriptions
apt-cache show com.package.name
to show the control file for PackageName
apt-cache showpkg com.package.name
to list dependencies required for PackageName and reverse dependencies on PackageName including uninstalled ones
Refreshing sources
apt-get update
to refresh sources
Upgrading and Installing
apt-get upgrade
to update packages without automatically removing/installing anything to satisfy conflicts/dependencies
apt-get dist-upgrade
to update packages by automatically removing conflicts and installing dependencies
apt-get install com.package.name
to install or update a package or packages; separate package names with a space; doesn’t work as a reinstall
apt-get install com.package.name=version.number
to install a specific version of a package if it’s available; only works if the package isn’t already installed at the requested version; works for downgrading
apt-get -d install com.package.name
to download a package to /var/cache/apt/archives without installing; only works if the package isn’t already installed (or at the same version requested as indicated with ‘=’)
Removing and Purging
apt-get remove com.package.name
to uninstall a package without removing configuration files
apt-get remove --purge com.package.name
to uninstall a package and remove configuration files (these are not preference files, which will still remain)
apt-get purge
to remove any remaining config files for uninstalled packages
apt-get autoremove
to remove dependencies that were installed for another package that has since been uninstalled and thus are no longer needed
Cleaning and Checking
apt-get autoclean
to only clean up old .deb files that can no longer be downloaded and are largely useless
apt-get clean
to clean up all .deb files in /var/cache/apt/archives
apt-get check
to check that there are no broken dependencies