apt-get vs aptitude

Marcelo Cavalcante kalibslack-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Thu Dec 17 12:09:15 UTC 2009


Hi there,

Some months ago I wrote a litle article about this difference: aptitude vs
apt-get.

Unfortunately it's in Portuguese, but if you want to read its you can use
google translate.

A short summary:

What many people do not know is that using the command "apt-get install
package_name" some packages will be installed as dependencies that won't be
automatically remove later. I mean, you'll have and accumulation of garbage
in your system. How?

Let's suppose I want to install an instant messenger application such as
aMSN. This tool has dependencies required fot its operation like TCL and TK.

The following command will install the amsn with its dependencies:

# apt-get install amsn

Great! Now I have my messenger properly installed, without any difficult and
running smoothly. BUt now I decided to remove this tool.

# apt-get remove amsn

Perfect! My amsn is uninstalled without difficulty.

But, what about those two packages? TCL and TK?

They are still installed, making a certain accumulation of garbage in your
system. The same will happens with all the packages that are installed in
your system and eventually removed with apt-get.

What about aptitude?

In installation, aptitude would be very similar, for example:

# aptitude install amsn

Like apt-get, aptitude will automatically install the dependencies of aMSN,
like TCL and TK.

Yeah, I wanna remove it now.

# aptitude remove amsn

Surprise! TCL and TK were removed too.

It's not magic guys! :D

Aptitude will check if TCL and TK are necessary to other packages in the
system. If not, it will remove then.

;]

My 2 cents...

---
-  °v°   Marcelo Cavalcante Rocha / Kalib
- /(_)\  ITIL V3 Foundation Certified | Certified Scrum Master
-  ^ ^   Usuário Linux #407564 / Usuário Asterisk #1148
- GNU-Linux - Livre, Poderoso e Seguro
- TUX-CE Member - www.tux-ce.org
- Archlinux-br Developer Team - http://archlinux-br.org
- KDE Brasil Member
- TLUG Member - Toronto Linux User Group
- http://www.marcelocavalcante.net


On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 4:46 AM, John Myshrall <jmyshrall-6duGhz7i8susTnJN9+BGXg at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> Rajinder Yadav wrote:
>
>> Christopher Browne wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 12:20 AM, Rajinder Yadav <devguy.ca-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> What is the difference between using apt-get and aptitude to install
>>>> packages?
>>>>
>>>> I'm using aptitude because if I recall correctly it manages the package
>>>> dependencies better, where as apt-get will not. I recall having to use
>>>> synaptic to fix a problem once and that when I stopped using apt-get.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The essential difference is that aptitude represents a "captive,
>>> GUI-ish" interface (albeit in a terminal window) whereas apt-get is
>>> purely scriptable/commandable.
>>>
>>
>> GUI? are we using the same aptitude =) I am using the command line on
>> kubuntu:
>>
>> i.e. 'sudo aptitude install <x>'
>>
>> the only gui package installed I see are kpackagekit and synaptic
>>
> type aptitude and you get a gui.
>
> http://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude
>
> http://wiki.debian.org/Apt
>
> http://wiki.debian.org/apt-get
>
> John
>
> --
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