Aptitude

From LocalizationWiki

What is this aptitude thing, anyway?

aptitude is a featureful package manager for Debian GNU/Linux systems, based on the renowned apt package management infrastructure. aptitude provides the functionality of dselect and apt-get, as well as many additional features not found in either program.

What is a package manager?

A package manager keeps track of what software is installed on your computer, and allows you to easily install new software, upgrade software to newer versions, or remove software that you previously installed. As the name suggests, package managers deal with packages: collections of files that are bundled together and can be installed and removed as a group.

aptitude Basics

To run aptitude, open your favorite text terminal, and at the command line, type:

foobar$ aptitude

As the top line of the screen suggests, you can access aptitude's menus by pressing Control+t; you can also click the mouse on a menu title if your system supports it. Pressing Control+t will open the Actions menu

Perform all pending installs and removals

Use the arrow keys and Enter to select menu items (or, if your system supports it, click on them with a mouse); to close the menu without selecting anything, press Control-t again. The currently highlighted menu item is explained at the bottom of the screen. If a menu item can be activated using a keyboard shortcut, the shortcut is displayed in the menu: for instance, the command ``Update package list can be activated by pressing u.

At any time, you can press ? to display an on-line reference to the available keyboard shortcuts.

Navigating the aptitude package list

Tip

       To save time, you can use the [ key to expand all the subgroups of a
       group at once. Selecting ``Installed Packages and pressing [ would
       have immediately revealed the packages in the screenshot below.

In addition to the arrow keys, you can move the selection through the package list a page of information at a time using the Page Up and Page Down keys.

Finding packages by name

To quickly find a package whose name you know, press / to open a search dialog:

Tip

       You can search backwards in the package list by pressing \, and you can
       repeat the last search by pressing n after closing the search window.

Managing packages

How to flag packages for installation, deletion, and upgrade

Tip

       You can only change your system's setup as the root user. If you want to
       experiment with aptitude, you can safely run it as any user other than
       root without damaging your system in any way. aptitude will tell you
       when you try to do something that only root can do, and if you want to
       continue, you must type root's password.

The basic action keys are + to install or upgrade a package, - to remove a package, and = to prevent a package from being automatically upgraded (this is known as holding the package). These actions are not performed immediately; aptitude will simply update the package list to show the change that has been requested.

Tip

       At any time, you can use Undo (Control+u) to ``undo any
       change to one or more packages. This is very useful if an action has
       unforseen consequences and you want to ``take it back.

In addition to actions that affect individual packages, another important action is available: typing U will attempt to upgrade any packages that can be upgraded. You should use this command on a regular basis to keep your system up- to-date.