Debian Package Management Using apt-get

Heres a tutorial on how to use the apt-get package management system in Debian and its derivitives such as Ubuntu and Knoppix. I will cover command line use of apt-get, the aptitude program and the Synaptic Package Manager. I wrote all of this myself, feel free to link to here but do not copy and paste it.

Debian uses apt-get package management. It looks at a series of defined repositories (servers) for the package(s) you want and will download them if they are there. The repositories are defined in the file

/etc/apt/sources.list

You can edit that file directly (make sure you have root) or use frontends like the Synaptic Package Manager or Software Sources (Menu item) in the distro.

Command Line Usage

To install a package you need to use the apt-get install command. For example to install the IRC program XChat you would type into the console.

sudo apt-get  install xchat

It would prompt you for your root password and then list information about the package and would double check you still want to download and install it.

To remove a package you would use the apt-get remove command. This will remove the package files but will keep the configuration files incase you install the same application…