From apt-get documentation, apt-cache search <search_term>
will find packages that include <search_term>
.
So if you want to get "software-center" to show up in the output of a apt-cache search
command, you should try apt-cache search software-center
.
Another related command can be dpkg -l *<search_term>*
which will find packages whose names contain <search_term>
. Similar to apt-cache search, but also shows whether a package is installed on your system by marking it with ii (installed) and un (not installed)
apt-cache search
is a very rudimentary tool, basically implementing grep on package's descriptions. It often returns too many results or none at all when you include too many keywords.
axi-cache search <search_term>
, on the other hand, provides better results, sorted by relevancy. It uses the Xapian search engine and is part of the apt-xapian-index
package which indexes all package information. It knows about tags and returns results in a matter of milliseconds.