GET THE MOST OUT OF APT-GET

introduce some other apt-get commands.

Ubuntu/ Debian use Apt (Advanced Package Tool) as their package manager (a tool that assist you on resolving dependencies when you need to install, upgrade, configure, and remove packages).

Through out this guide, we only use mostly the command apt-get install. In this lesson, I will show you how to get the most out of Apt package manger.

It all starts with update repositories information:

apt-get update

To update entire of system:

apt-get upgrade

Although name “upgrade”, the command is only for update packages that are already installed in your system.

To install and update a package

apt-get install [package name]

The command also update that package if it has already installed.

To install a package without its recommends (this is the case of installing a minimal Ubuntu/Debian desktop)

To do that you need to specify this flag: –no-install-recommends

apt-get install <span style="color:blue">--no-install-recommends</span> [package name]

To remove a package

apt-get remove [package name]

To remove a package along with all of its configuration file:

apt-get --purge remove [package name]

To find information about installed or can be installed packages

apt-cache search [package name/ related word]

For instance, you can search for the key word “image viewer” to find all the info about image viewer in repositories.

apt-cache search “image viewer”

The output should be the list of packages that are related to image viewer.

To list dependencies and recommends of a packages

It’s very useful when you were trying to install a minimal Ubuntu system (mostly by using the ”–no-install-recommends” flag) and sometimes found in a situation where some of your applications were lacking features (you need to installs some more of it recommends).

apt-cache depends [package name]

To show the version of a package and which repository it is come from

apt-cache policy [package-name]

To find out about information about a package

apt-cache show [package-name]

dpkg

Although not using apt but I find the below is a essential command to supplement to apt features.

dpkg -s [package name]

In fact, I often use it rather than apt-cache show/policy.

In my experience, with just all these commands, you can effectively manage your applications and your Ubuntu system.

To find if a package is installed on your system

dpkg -l [package-name]