6 ms·

I've been using Ubuntu with apt-get for quite a few years now. What additional funcionality does aptitude offer over "plain" apt-get?

• nicktelford 15y ago
  The biggest advantage is when removing packages; its dependency resolution is (supposedly) much better so it's able to find and remove orphan packages more accurately without hosing your system. It's also got a much friendlier set of commands: $ apt-get upgrade vim # aptitude upgrade vim $ apt-get dist-upgrade # aptitude full-upgrade $ apt-cache search # aptitude search $ apt-get install --reinstall vim # aptitude reinstall vim $ apt-get remove --purge vim # aptitude purge vim The list goes on. It's also got an awesome ncurses based interactive interface if you just type: $ aptitude Great for sysadmins who miss synaptic or anyone who feels like a GUI is just too mainstream.
  • ernesth 15y ago
    apt-get also is able to remove orphaned libraries. Among other "advantages" of aptitude, it can be terribly slower than apt-get. And it has a "smart" dependency engine that often proposes convoluted solutions (involving uninstalling packages I don't want uninstalled) when apt-get will simply update the dependency and their dependents... But at least, if you don't agree with the first solutions, it has others (sometimes including the one apt-get chooses).
  • bostonvaulter2 15y ago
    What's the history of the aptitude and apt-* family of commands? Why do they both exist?
    • sciurus 15y ago
      It would be nice to see an overview from folks who've been involved. You can get some of the history from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dpkg#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dpkg#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dselect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dselect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Packaging_Tool#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Packaging_Tool#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptitude_(software)#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptitude_(software)#History http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-detailed.en.html http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-detaile....
• JoshTriplett 15y ago
  Aptitude has an optional screen-oriented GUI, much better search and filtering capabilities, a listing of "new" packages each time you update, and an excellent dependency resolver.
• obtu 15y ago
  My favourite feature is the search capabilities, which are well integrated and extremely powerful. # installed packages with yaml in the name aptitude search '~i yaml' # installed packages requiring yaml # (~D means depends on) aptitude search '~i ~D yaml' # packages whose name starts with lib and # mentioning SQL in their descriptions aptitude search '^lib ~d sql' # installed packages from some non-standard repo # apt-cache policy describes package origins aptitude search '~i ?origin(apt.opscode.com)' # why is libvirt0 installed? aptitude why libvirt0 # which ubuntu metapackage is keeping libvirt0 installed? aptitude why '~i ubun' libvirt0 # don't keep any transitional package installed sudo aptitude markauto '~i ~d transitional' # purge ganeti packages sudo aptitude purge '~i ganeti'
  • nicktelford 15y ago
    I didn't know about this matching. Awesome. Now I'm even more annoyed that our servers are all CentOS :(