Aptitude or Apt-Get
Was asked this recently, as far as I know the only core difference is Aptitude has a better way of handling dependencies when you remove a package; cleans up better. In all you should try to switch to Aptitude where possible, if you’ve installed a package with Aptitude then when you remove it via Aptitude it’ll know about any dependencies it has to check for or orphaned packages.
Update and Upgrade
apt-get update
apt-get -u upgrade
aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade
Install Package
apt-get install gedit
aptitude install gedit
Remove Package (keep config files)
apt-get remove gedit
aptitude remove gedit
Remove Package Completely
apt-get --purge remove gedit
aptitude purge gedit
Upgrade Package
apt-get install gedit
List Possible Upgrades
apt-get upgrade gedit
Show Package Info
dpkg --info gedit*.deb | less
List All Packages
dpkg -l
Check if Package install plus Info
dpkg -l | grep -i 'gedit'
List files owned by package
dpkg -L gedit
List files inside Package
dpkg --contents gedit*.deb
Find out who owns this Package
dpkg -S /bin/netstat
Check if Package installed and it’s Status
dpkg -s gedit| grep Status
Show Dependencies for a Package
apt-cache depends mysql-server
Wajig
Wajig is a Linux tool that combines a lot of the abilities within apt-*, aptitude and dpkg into one command. Written in Python it handles normal users and super-user privileges & can be installed with…
apt-get install wajig
aptitude install wajig
More info here
