Comparison of dpkg/APT/aptitude/Ubuntu software centre/synaptic package manager

Question

What are the pros and cons of

• dpkg
• APT
• aptitude
• Ubuntu software centre
• synaptic package manager

when used to install, remove and update software?

Answer 1

• dpkg is tool to install/remove/configure... only a sigle package
• apt and aptitude are tools for working with software repositories -- they can download packages from them, solve dependecies, calculate updates etc. they're using dpkg to install/configure packages (there are some differences between apt and aptitude, but in general, they are doing the same)
• Synaptic is simple GUI for apt
• Software Center is also GUI for apt (I think it's using python-apt) and it's much more "user friendly" than Synaptic

Answer 2

• They all use dpkg, synaptic and software centre are GUI interfaces to apt and dpkg.

• aptitude is a newer replacement for apt(Advanced Package Tool).

• dpkg is a tool to install,build,remove and manage Debian packages.

• dpkg handles the actual installation of the package file,and it manages the installed packages database.

• apt does dependeny resolution,while dpkg does package installation and removing. i.e if you install say gnome,you do apt-get install gnome.Then to have gnome you need a lot of other packages than simply gnome.deb,about a hundred other ones.To figure out which ones,apt is used that's dependency resolution.

• Synaptic and Software centre are the gui for libapt while apt-get and aptitude are console.

For more details:

• You can see the man pages of apt,aptitude and dpkg.