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The APT seems to have developed into a very comprehensive environment, hosting a multitude of command-line, and GUI based tools.

Comprehensive information regarding the APT system, specially from the perspective of a system maintainer does not seem to be available from one single source, but rather seems to be scattered over man-pages, blogs and How-To's.

What is/are the most up to date and comprehensive sources of information on the APT system which allows the user to appreciate:

  1. The architecture of the repositories, mirrors and package distribution system and APT as a whole
  2. The workings/mechanisms of the above
  3. The legal, social / community & policy issues affecting the above ( i.e. the various repositories and release policies and restrictions... etc. )
  4. The various client tools available for leveraging APT's facilities and capabilities

For example are there any recent publications that might cover some, most or even all of the above. Is there a new link or How-To to that effect?

Of course once the above are understood the man pages become a very tool.

Perhaps the info simply >is< scattered over the man-pages, blogs and How-To's and isn't organized under one roof...

... in that case could any of the experienced APT gurus, point out those resources that are available, particularly pointing out which of the above points (1 to 4) are addressed by each resource (to their best knowledge and judgement)?

This might help to list and summarize all the info related to APT in one point (i.e. the answers to this question) and may benefit many of the forum users specially when it comes to maintaining and updating their Ubuntu installations.

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    I believe this question as real enough ( and possibly useful enough to others ) to leave it here. A couple of short lines/paragraphs ( much like @minerz029 's answer below ) are all that is required. Hopefully others will have more hints to contribute, so I'll leave it open for a while.
    – darbehdar
    Dec 25, 2013 at 13:26
  • Depending on what you plan to do (may be to benefit the Debian/Ubuntu community), you may want to take that topic to Ubuntu Discourse. But please don't just copy and paste. Also improving the structure and formating of your question might help keeping our happy-close-bandits away. :)
    – LiveWireBT
    Dec 26, 2013 at 11:09

1 Answer 1

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To answer your numbered questions,

  1. There is a comprehensive article on this at the Debian wiki.
  2. Covered in 1.
  3. Packages are split into different 'components' depending on their license and support like so:

    • Main - Officially supported software.

    • Restricted - Supported software that is not available under a completely free license.

    • Universe - Community maintained software, i.e. not officially supported software.

    • Multiverse - Software that is not free.

    The exact license for each package is different and you should check individually.

  4. Listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Packaging_Tool#Front-ends

    The following is an excerpt from the above:

    • Synaptic Package Manager, a GTK+ graphical user interface
    • Ubuntu Software Center, a GTK+ graphical user interface replacement for Synaptic
    • aptitude, a versatile alternative to dselect
    • KPackage, part of KDE
    • Adept Package Manager, a graphical user interface for KDE (deb, rpm, bsd)
    • PackageKit, a freedesktop.org frontend.
    • GDebi, a GTK-based tool sponsored for Ubuntu. (There is also a Qt version, available in the Ubuntu repositories a gdebi-kde.)
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  • Hi minerz029, great answer! This is what I had in mind.Thank you!
    – darbehdar
    Dec 25, 2013 at 7:17
  • @darbehdar If the answer helped you then click the check mark next to it to accept it. Thanks
    – kiri
    Dec 25, 2013 at 7:25
  • There may be others with hints / suggestions that might complement your answer...
    – darbehdar
    Dec 25, 2013 at 9:34
  • I found the following article on It'sFoss, which for the benefit of others I share here: What are Ubuntu Repositories? How to enable or disable them?
    – darbehdar
    Jun 22, 2020 at 5:11

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