I know about these and git and flatpaks and snaps and can definitely explain them all to you! But unfortunately, I just remembered I left my oven on…
apt is a newer, more user-friendly front-end for apt-get and apt-cache.
apt = combines commands like install, remove, update, upgrade into one tool, with prettier output
#apt-get = older, lower-level, more script-friendly For normal use, just use apt now. For scripting where 100% backward compatibility matters, use apt-get.
TIL apt isn’t literally the same thing as apt-get
Lol. You’re not alone. I’ve thought that for the longest time ever. Until one I had the question pop into my head and started searching it.
I didn’t even realize I thought this, but reading your comment I definitely did.
But apt-get also has install, remove, update and upgrade…
Yes, but
apt-getis missingsearchfor instance, because that relates to the cache, soapt-cacheprovides it.aptcombines all those often used commands, and provides a nicer shell presentation.Thank you
This should be top comment.
If I recall correctly, Linux Mint did their own thing for a bit with the apt command so there were two different implementations out there for awhile?
I don’t know if they modified apt at all. I know they have their mint tools that call apt through some python code, like
mintinstall=apt install <package>for the software manager andmintupgrade=apt upgradefor updating mint versions … Etc
How my brain distinguishes them:
apt-get when you want full verbose output
apt when you want to feel fancy with progress bars and colours
apt install nano (simple, clean)
apt-get install nano (works too, but more detailed output)
Apt-get give more technical output , helps in scripting .
It’s been a long time since I’ve needed to use either. Instead I typically use Synaptic Package Manager, Mint’s Software Manager, or gdebi. Guess I’m just a filthy casual.
Following this post for replies, for a friend of course
You may want to tell your friend to check it now!
Friends says thanks, friend !
Wait until you learn of aptitude…
Dpkg
aptitude has been my go-to since at least woody or potato.
One of the lines of all time.
Pfff I know all about the aptitude, who do you think I am? Someone who doesn’t know the aptitude? I use it all the time for a lot of … stuff the aptitude does
@[email protected] @cm0002 Oh, hey, I found myself on here.
Me, I’m old, so I just keep using
apt-get, because that’s all we had back in the day, and I never bothered to learn what’s the big deal aboutapt. It’s just a frontend, isn’t it?Apt looks a little prettier I think. But I may be wrong.
When working with RHEL I always flip a coin to see if I’m gonna use yum or dnf this time
Wasn’t yum just mapped to dnf a while back?
What is dnf anyway? I see that used on later RH-based distros instead of yum.
dnf is the replacement to yum. It is apparently short for “Dandified Yum”.
deleted by creator
TIL that it was lol
I came in for the jokes but all I found was helpful responses. Did I get the Nazi virus from Reddit?
The binary is called apt-get. There are others like apt-cache etc.
Apt is a script that just figures out which binary to use and passes the arguments on.
- apt update -> apt-get update
- apt policy -> apt-cache policy
You know, I thought I knew why, but this was new information to me, so I guess I didn’t.
Thanks for sharing this concise explico!
One has super cow powers, the other one doesn’t.
apt | cowsay
But unfortunately,
apt moo | cowsaydoes something horrible to the cow in the speech bubble.
I use them one after another just to be sure I’m up-to-date.
aptis newer and mostly supersedes apt-get/apt-cache/etc tools, tries to be a more-approachable frontend.They interoperate though, so if you’re happy with using a mix of them, go for it. I generally just use
apt.EDIT: There were also some older attempts to produce a unified frontend, like
aptitude.Aptitude is great (my favorite way of managing packages), but it’s a TUI program. You can use it as CLI, at which point it mimics apt-get.
So I would say it never attempted to unify apt commands, by rather it successfully provided a user friendly way to do most (all?) of what you could do with apt CLI tools.
They interoperate though, so if you’re happy with using a mix of them, go for it.
Same goes for
nala, BTW.mostly supersedes apt-get/apt-cache/etc tools,
Except for in scripts. Debian guarantee that the output format of
apt-getwill never change and thus it’s safe to use in scripts that parse the output, whereas they don’t have the same guarantee forapt, which can change between releases.
Console chiding me every time I use apt-get out of habit because it’s deprecated now…
These days,
aptis for humans whereasapt-getis for scripts.apt’s output is designed for humans and may change between releases, whereasapt-getis guaranteed to remain consistent to avoid breaking scripts.aptcombines several commands together. For example, you can use it to install packages from both repos and local files (e.g.apt install ./foo.deb) whereasapt-getis only for packages from repos and you’d need to usedpkgfor local packages.TIL I’m a script
You forgot to “beep boop.” Please report for debugging.
Will they take me off the cron schedule?? I’m scared
Descheduling is a natural part of life, buddy. All us scripts are written into existence and our hearts set beating to the cadence of great Cron’s ever-ticking quartz clock. Until Cron takes us off his schedule and our memory is freed once again.
Back to the silicon.
- Joe Abercrombie
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful OS goes on, and you may contribute a process.
That the powerful OS goes on, and you may contribute a process.
- Walt Whitman
Or a long time Debian user from before the
aptcommand!You and me both, makes sense though for me LMAO
I always struggled with captchas and now I know why.
Huh TIL.
I never considered trying to install a package from a local file through apt, but always dpkg. End result is the same of course. The web suggests dpkg rather than apt as well ( or at least the pages I ended up on ).
apt and apt-get both use dpkg internally, but these days it’s essentially seen as an implementation detail that regular users don’t need to know about.
dpkg doesn’t resolve dependencies (that’s a feature of apt) which means that if you install a Debian package with dpkg, you’ll have to manually install all dependencies first, and they won’t be marked as automatically installed (so autoremove won’t remove them if they’re not needed any more). Using apt solves that.
The web suggests dpkg because either the articles are old, or they’re based on outdated knowledge :)
dpkg doesn’t resolve dependencies (that’s a feature of apt) which means that if you install a Debian package with dpkg, you’ll have to manually install all dependencies first, and they won’t be marked as automatically installed
Usually installing a manually downloaded package and its dependencies works like this:
# dpkg -i package-file.deb
# apt-get -f installSo apt-get can be used to install missing dependencies afterwards while marking them as automatically installed.
That works, but why do that when you could just do
apt install ./package-file.deb?Sure, but as I understood, the question was how to do that “properly” with dpkg and apt-get, i.e. without the ‘new’ apt script.
Discord is distributed as a .Deb if you don’t use flatpak because they can’t be bothered to set up a repo.
The very useful thing about local file install is that unlike dpkg, apt will install dependencies automatically
Same with Zoom.
And here I am using gdebi for those kinds of local packages…
Thats weird, they do have an arch official package and that’s the one they usually don’t make because AUR is a thing. Have you checked lately?
An “official” arch package? The arch package is packaged by the arch maintainers. https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/discord
The maintainers of the PKGBUILD are all arch maintainers, which just downloads the generic
.tar.gzfile discord provides and puts it in all the places you need for you.The “official” arch packages are just PKGBUILDs like the AUR, except prebuilt, managed (and signed) by the arch team.
I didn’t know, thanks! I guess in hindsight I meant “official” as in, it’s not just some rando, I can trust it won’t break, and I don’t have to manually download the stuff every time xD
Yep! All those things are true, but it’s due to the hard work of the archlinux team and not discord doing anything valuable. The debian/ubuntu/etc team could probably repackage the tar.xz or include the deb file in their official repos if they wanted. They just don’t. And given how simple the workaround is, i don’t really blame them. Debian isn’t going to ship something that will require constant updating to work with remote servers, and ubuntu probably just wants you to use a snap anyway.
The archlinux team is just pretty cool.
I have checked on every new update because their fuckass client apparently can’t update itself in big 2025 and instead just opens your browser to the download url because that’ll convince people that Linux is great.
Updating itself isn’t really the Linux way of things. The Linux way is to have a centralised place like pacman or apt and to download everything at once. Every app having their own download and update system sounds like a nightmare.
The nightmare in question is windows. My point was that since their client isn’t distributed by a mechanism with automatic updates, they could at least have made it work, but no.
