What is difference of apt-get
and aptitude
? Does both of them use same repositories?
Which one is better?
aptitude
is supposed to be a user level program whereas apt-get
is supposed to be used by higher level programs. It just turns out apt-get
is easy to use so people just use it instead of the higher level managers like aptitude
and synaptic
.
aptitude
is more user-friendly because it adds a layer of abstraction away from apt-get
, apt-cache
etc..; apt-get
is more user-friendly than dpkg
for the same reason. It's really down to the user's knowledge and what works best for them. aptitude
and apt-get
use the same repositories. Let it be clear that aptitude
does not itself run apt-get
apt-cache
etc.. I merely mean to point out that aptitude
is a higher level package manager.
aptitude
- High level of abstractionapt-get
, apt-cache
, etc.dpkg
- Low level of abstractionapt-get
often falls on its face for simple operations, and it has no ability to handle dependency mismatches or broken packages (although it claims that broken packages can be fixed with apt-get install -f
, I've literally never seen that work in my entire life). For some reason, I use apt-get
by default, but when it encounters problems, I usually end up resolving them with aptitude
, which never seems to encounter apt-get
's numerous problems.
-f
flag. Aptitude did it without any problem.
Jun 23, 2014 at 14:07
apt-get
is supposed to be used by higher level programs like aptitude
." but then "Let it be clear that Aptitude does not itself use apt-get apt-cache etc."? What are you actually trying to say? If it only boils down to the idea that aptitude
is "higher level", that's only true in a metaphorical - & subjective - sense. For example, if the idea is that it's "higher level" merely because it has all commands in one binary - well, apt
can also do that. So this doesn't tell us anything really.
Oct 30, 2015 at 11:15
apt-get
andaptitude
are both front ends todpkg
. Use one or the other but be consistent.aptitude
is newer and is suppose to be easier to use. It also unifies some of theapt-*
functions. You can useaptitude
to search and install while withapt-*
you needapt-get
andapt-cache
for installation and searching respectively.
Source: Superuser.com
Few other links you might like to read.