One of the noticeable new features of Ubuntu 16.04 was the “introduction” of apt command. The reality is that the first stable version of apt was released in the year 2014 but people started noticing it in 2016 with the release of Ubuntu 16.04.
It became common to see apt install package instead of the usual apt-get install package. Eventually, many other distributions followed Ubuntu’s footsteps and started to encourage users to use apt instead of apt-get.
| Function | apt-get | apt |
|---|---|---|
| Install package | apt-get install | apt install |
| Remove package | apt-get remove | apt remove |
| Remove package including configuration | apt-get purge | apt purge |
| Update sources | apt-get update | apt update |
| Update packages (without removing or reinstalling) | apt-get upgrade | apt upgrade1 |
| Update packages (with removing and reinstalling) | apt-get dist-upgrade | apt full-upgrade |
| Remove unnecessary dependencies | apt-get autoremove | apt autoremove |
| Search package | apt-get search | apt search |
| Display package information | apt-cache show | apt show |
| Display active package sources in detail | apt-cache policy | apt policy |
| Display available and installed package versions | apt-cache policy | apt policy |
Debian, mother Linux of distributions like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, elementary OS etc, has a robust packaging system and every component and application is built into a package that is installed on your system. Debian uses a set of tools called Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) to manage this packaging system. Don’t confuse it with the command apt, it’s not the same.
There are various tools that interact with APT and allow you to install, remove and manage packages in Debian based Linux distributions. apt-get is one such command-line tool which is widely popular. Another tool is Aptitude with both GUI and command-line options.
Another one is apt-cache, which arises the problem.
These commands are way too low level and they have so many functionalities which are perhaps never used by an average Linux user. On the other hand, the most commonly used package management commands are scattered across apt-get and apt-cache.
The apt commands have been introduced to solve this problem. apt consists some of the most widely used features from apt-get and apt-cache leaving aside obscure and seldom used features.
apt = most common used command options from apt-get and apt-cache