Post #3741133
2026-07-10 00:15 UTC
I have been using aptitude since forever. Today, however, I needed to search through installed packages and remembered just how unintuitive the syntax is!
A few articles deep I learnt that good old apt-get has a new API through apt and it appears to be designed for clarity and ease of use. Should I switch?
Which tool do you use? If there is a specific reason besides habit I would be very curious to hear it!
#debian #apt #aptitude #aptget #packageManagement #linux #software #sysadmin
Replies (4)
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@harmoniousanger@zeroes.ca 2026-07-10 01:27
@tchauhan@mastodon.mit.edu you sure can! man 7 apt-patterns it's documented locally, no more reading 90% wrong random web articles
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@Micha_Silver@fosstodon.org 2026-07-10 06:53
@tchauhan@mastodon.mit.edu I use dpkg (piped thru grep) to search for installed packages, and apt for searching/ installing/updating packages.
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@mdione@en.osm.town 2026-07-10 07:59
@tchauhan@mastodon.mit.edu "all of the above".
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@aspragg@ohai.social 2026-07-10 16:31
@tchauhan@mastodon.mit.edu I think it depends. What are you searching for? Just package names/descriptions, or metadata like priority/dependencies/section/etc...? Also, what is the new apt search API? I couldn't immediately find any information about that. Hard to compare without that info.