aptitude

on Thursday 12 March 2015

aptitude is a front-end to the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) in Debian and Debian-based distributions. This program allows users to view the list of packages and perform package management tasks such as installing, removing or upgrading packages. aptitude has an interactive mode similar to dselect, but it can be also used as a command-line tool, similar to apt-get.

To enter the menu-driven package management interface, type aptitude:

We will now describe how you can install, remove or upgrade packages using this menu-driven interface.

Install packages

First, press “u” to update the list of packages available for installation. Then, navigate the menu and press “+” to select the packages you wish to install. You can search for a package by pressing the “/” key. After you have selected all the packages you wish to install, press “g” to begin downloading and installing the package files.

For example, here is how we can install nmap using aptitude:

First, we will search for nmap:

Then, we will select the nmap package by pressing the “+” key:

To download and install nmap, press “g“:

Upgrade packages

First, press “u” to update the list of packages available for installation. Next, press “U” to upgrade all packages which may be upgraded. Press “g” to download and install upgraded package files:

Remove packages

Navigate the aptitude menu and press “-” to select the packages you wish to remove. Press “g” to begin removing the packages.

For example, to remove nmap, we would have to find the nmap package and press the “-” key to select it for the removal:

We can then remove nmap by pressing “g“.

You can also pass various commands to aptitude on the command line. aptitude emulates most apt-get command-line arguments, allowing it to act as a full replacement for apt-get. For example, to search for a package, you can type aptitude search PACKAGE_NAME:
aptitude search command