I think the reason some prefer apt is that aptitude has more finely grained dependency handling and the dependencies have grown tremendously over the years (over 40,000 discrete packages now). Even though apt will not break anything, it's never a bad idea to use aptitude as it always offer solutions. It's slower to search than apt-cache but it is much more powerful in searching. Aptitude does a LOT more than apt-get. It like an apt-*
I really use them interchangeably, and synaptic and other tools as well. It really doesn't matter. But here's a copy / paste of the major differences: - aptitude will automatically remove eligible packages, whereas apt-get requires a separate command to do so - The commands for *upgrade* vs. *dist-upgrade* have been renamed in aptitude to the probably more accurate names *safe-upgrade* and *full-upgrade*, respectively. - aptitude actually performs the functions of not just apt-get, but also some of its companion tools, such as apt-cache and apt-mark. - aptitude has a slightly different query syntax for searching (compared to apt-cache) - aptitude has the *why* and *why-not* commands to tell you which *manually installed* packages are preventing an action that you might want to take. - If the actions (installing, removing, updating packages) that you want to take cause conflicts, aptitude can suggest several potential resolutions. apt-get will just say "I'm sorry Dave, I can't allow you to do that." Tim Kelley On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 7:21 AM, Francisco M Neto <[email protected]> wrote: > I actually miss the good'ol days of dselect. Apart from that I've been > using a combination of apt for small tasks and synaptic for large numbers > of packages. > > > On 04/27/2015 08:21 AM, Teresa e Junior wrote: > >> On Mon, 27 Apr 2015 11:40:37 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote: >> >>> On Monday 27 April 2015 11:35:42 Chris Bannister wrote: >>> >>>> On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 03:22:33AM -0300, Teresa e Junior wrote: >>>> >>>>> On Sat, 25 Apr 2015 19:16:24 -0400, Kynn Jones wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> I'm considering going back to apt, even though most of the advice I've >>>>>> read on apt vs aptitude leans in favor of the latter. After this >>>>>> experience, I've lost trust in aptitude. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Probably old advice, apt is the most recommended nowadays. >>>>> >>>> >>>> I don't think that is true at all. >>>> >>> >>> Agreed. There are pros and cons. I like and use aptitude. >>> >> >> Yeah, I thought I read somewhere that aptitude is not recommended >> anymore, but looking back, what really happened is that I had many negative >> experiences with aptitude (it would always try to uninstall packages >> installed by apt), so the right sentence would be "apt is the most >> recommended nowadays by me"® >> >> >> > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a > subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] > Archive: https://lists.debian.org/[email protected] > >
