15 Most Usable 'apt-get' Package Managing Commands That You Must Know !!

Please Read This 👇🏾

 

Apt-get is an  command line utility which is used to manage , manipulate , control, update , upgrade the system & its packages in Debian or Debian base Linux distro like Ubuntu. Its a very handy & powerful tool. In this post I will discuss & show some most common & useful apt-get commands. So lets start...

Note: You must have root privilege or sudo access in order to use apt-get commands.

1) sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
 

This is the most common but important command. Its update the list of available packages in the local repo & the upgrade command will upgrade the packages which already you have installed.

You can find the source list of the current configured source package repository file under the

/etc/apt/source.list

2) sudo apt-get install package_name

This is another important command which is used to install a package which is present in the package source list.

3) sudo apt-get remove package_name

Another command which is used to uninstall any existed installed packaged in the Debian system. But this command does not remove the package configuration, Also the dependencies of package will remain in the system.

4) apt-get remove --purge package_name

This command will remove the packages completely including configuration files but does not remove dependencies

5) sudo apt-get autoremove

You  can use this command to remove the orphaned packages / dependencies which installed automatically while installing a particular package,

6) aptitude remove package_name

It will remove only those packages which are installed as a dependencies while installing a package.  This commands only listen for dependencies. 

7) apt list --installed

This command give you the list of all installed packages in the system. You can use --upgradable, --all options also.

 8) apt-cache search package_name

search for a package which is installed / available in the cached repo list

9) apt-cache show package_name

This command will give you details about a package attributes e.g package full name, version, package source , size, dependencies etc .

10) apt-get full-upgrade

This command is used to fully upgrade the system from current version to a newly available version of debian system. For example Ubuntu 19.10 to 20.3

11) apt edit-sources 

You can use this command to edit the source list in your system.

12) apt-get source package_name

This command will automatically found the latest source package  and download it . your can specify the version with option -t

13) sudo apt-get check

check is a diagnostic tool; it updates the package cache and checks for broken dependencies.

14) sudo apt-get download package_name

Download the package in the current directory

15) sudo apt-get clear

This command will clears out the local repository of retrieved package files. you can use the autoclean  option instead. ( do not run for test only)


If You think there is any command that I should add in the list , Please comment below. I will definitely add that command.


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