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apt

The APT package manager in Debian, Ubuntu, and derived distributions.

apt vs apt-get

It's foss: apt vs apt-get

  • apt is for interactive use, including commonly-used commands from apt-get and apt-cache. And it has a nice progress bar.
  • apt-get is more inclined for non-interactive use in scripts because of its stable interface.

nala: a prettier and faster frontend

Nala is a front-end for libapt-pkg and is a (almost) drop-in replacement for apt.

  • Better Text UI
  • Parallel package downloads
  • Discover fastest mirrors (nala fetch)

To install nala:

sudo apt install nala

To find fastest mirrors:

sudo nala fetch

To update the system:

sudo nala upgrade

apt-fast: apt in parallel

ilikenwf/apt-fast is shell script wrapper for apt-get and aptitude that can drastically improve apt download times by downloading packages in parallel, with multiple connections per package.

One can use apt-fast commands just like apt e.g., sudo apt-fast update, sudo apt-fast dist-upgrade.

Should your downloads stall for any reasons, you'll need to run apt-fast clean to fix it.

To install apt-fast:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:apt-fast/stable
echo debconf apt-fast/maxdownloads string 16 | sudo debconf-set-selections
echo debconf apt-fast/dlflag boolean true | sudo debconf-set-selections
echo debconf apt-fast/aptmanager string apt-get | sudo debconf-set-selections
sudo apt update && sudo apt install apt-fast -y

Synaptic : the GUI package manager for APT

The additional package apt-xapian-index gives a search box in synaptic.

sudo apt install synaptic apt-xapian-index

Add signing keys

Use of apt-key is deprecated according to the Debian manpage

Here, we take adding signing keys for the Vivaldi browser as an example.

curl -fsSL https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/vivaldi-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/vivaldi-keyring.gpg] https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/deb/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vivaldi.list > /dev/null
  • Text key files (.asc) should be converted to binary ones (.gpg) using gpg --dearmor.
  • In the apt list, use [signed-by=/path/to/key.gpg] to specify the location of the keyring.
  • Use echo <stuff> | sudo tee <file> to add file content with sudo rights.

Fix APT package manager

Try these commands to fix broken apt package registry (from system76 docs).

sudo apt clean
sudo apt update -m
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt install -f
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo apt autoremove --purge