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You're right, but that's for just <code>rm</code>, which removes files and directories. The apt-get remove command uninstalls software using <code>apt-get</code>, which uses different flags. Hope that helps!

straight from the man(ual) page on apt-get

apt-get is the command-line tool for handling packages, and may be considered the user's "back-end" to other tools using the APT library. Several "front-end" interfaces exist, such as aptitude(8), synaptic(8) and wajig(1).

Long story short, aptitude will call apt-get for you if that's how to do what you ask it to do.

It seems most people using a shell will prefer apt-get, from personal experience. aptitude or other front ends will generally try to make things more user-friendly than using the underlying tools directly. So, if you want simple and easy, try aptitude or even a GUI tool like the Ubuntu Software Center. If you want to learn debian style package management and configuration in more detail, apt-get is the way to go. (be sure to also check out apt-cache and other tools from the Advanced Package System if you go the latter route)

P.S. If you continue to use a debian based distro, you'll eventually run into a package in the form of a .deb file. When this happens, here is your saving grace:

sudo dpkg -i DEB_FILE_HERE.deb sudo apt-get -f install

Doing so will install all other packages needed for the DEB_FILE_HERE package to install and run, should they exist in the repositories specified in /etc/apt/sources.list and or /etc/apt/sources.list.d/* files.

And remember, RTFM :)

Image files are huge. Would you want to reinstall windows to try out various programs? No. It's completely unnecessary.

Many things can be installed using apt, though many projects are hosted on the likes of Github and can have their own installation scripts.

As I said, you need to take a step back. You don't just go download packages off the Internet and install them.

First, configure your apt sources (including contrib and non-free). Then, update the repository lists, Finally, you install all the software using debian's package manager.

Debian's wiki is a great place to start.

> about 600 versions behind current vim

Vim: Vim version 8.0. Last change: 2017 Apr 23

Debian Stretch: vim (2:8.0.0197-4)

Debian apt-src is your friend: https://wiki.debian.org/apt-src

You can, it's just that this seems like more steps than necessary. It takes a few different commands to do, and (as a relative newb) looks like it would be quite messy for the filesystem.

Usually you would just do apt-get update and apt-get upgrade to install new updates and let apt handle the rest. However since you are new and want to explore more I'd suggest installing Apper

I've grown fond of Apper myself (although I use Debian 7 so I mostly use it to discover other applications, etc or when I'm using other distro). It will alert you of new updates and install them for you.

apt-get install apper

P.S I don't know how well it integrates with GNOME 3 or other environments.

You mention several distros to explore, each of them have their own way of packaging.

This is what I do in Debian: Add the experimental sources repo to the soources.list:

# deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ experimental main contrib

Build and install the backported packages from experimental sources:

# apt-src --build install mesa

Apt-src: https://wiki.debian.org/apt-src
Mesa: https://packages.debian.org/source/experimental/mesa

By the way, what feature is Mesa 17.1 offering to you that you need today?

>There are a bunch of commands: apt-get, apt-file, apt-config, add-apt-repository. Are there more? Is there a concise simple list I can see with all the flags and stuff?

Typically you can do:

apt-get --help

And you will get short description of the program and a list of common flags. For a more in depth description you can look at the man page:

man apt-get

That will contain the complete documentation of whatever application you direct it at (in my example the man page for apt-get).

>Is apt-file basically a grep for managing PPAs?

I've never used apt-file but according to this page it

>is a software package that indexes the contents of packages in your available repositories and allows you to search for a particular file among all available packages.

>Let's say that I installed a package and now I want to nuke the install. I would use apt-get remove, but that doesn't remove the dependencies, right?

Correct, it will not remove dependencies. If you pay attention to the output returned when apt-get remove is finished it will tell you that there are now unused packages installed and you can use 'apt-get autoremove' to delete them.

>By dependencies in this context in Ubuntu/linux, what is meant?

Dependencies are simply other packages or libraries that the application you wish to use/install requires for it to actually function.

Lastly (since you seem to be hung up on this concept), a PPA is just a type of repository. Instead of it being an 'official' repo though it is a community created repo. This link has a pretty good explanation on what a PPA is.

Another super handy one is apt-file, which will allow you to search across all file names within your repos, for the package that makes that file available. It's also a separate tool from apt.

https://wiki.debian.org/apt-file

Ahh, oops. It looks like you're missing the pyqt5-dev package. I found that by using the apt-file tool:

sudo apt install -y apt-file && sudo apt update && apt-file search QtCoremod.sip:

pyqt5-dev: /usr/share/sip/PyQt5/QtCore/QtCoremod.sip

> apt-get build-dep pinta

To expand on this, apt is the package management tool for debian and it's directives. apt-get is the main tool you'll use for interfacing with apt.

> apt-get build-dep <package_name>

>This command searches the repositories and installs the build dependencies for <package_name>.

So this command will download and install everything you need to build the package, IF the package is already part of your repositories.

A quick way to find which package provides a file is to use https://packages.ubuntu.com/ , or install and use apt-file on the command line.

The tricky part is to remember that despite the message having uppercase names for files, the actual dep can involve lowercase text.

so:

$ apt-file search QtWaylandScanner extra-cmake-modules: /usr/share/ECM/find-modules/FindQtWaylandScanner.cmake extra-cmake-modules: /usr/share/doc/ECM/html/_sources/find-module/FindQtWaylandScanner.rst.txt extra-cmake-modules: /usr/share/doc/ECM/html/find-module/FindQtWaylandScanner.html

But you probably already have extra-cmake-modules, and you are looking for the executable.

So:

$ apt-file search qtwaylandscanner qtwayland5-dev-tools: /usr/lib/qt5/bin/qtwaylandscanner qtwayland5-dev-tools: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/bin/qtwaylandscanner

> Is update manager in Mint known to be wobbly?

Update manager is just a front-end to APT, the package management system. Without knowing what the original error was, it's impossible to know what was or is going on.

1. Termux uses the apt package manager, unlike Arch Linux (which uses pacman). You can use pacapt, which is a simple wrapper around other package managers (if you don't want to learn how to use apt). Alternatively, see the Debian wiki

2. You can open multiple Termux sessions by swiping from left to right. See the Termux wiki for more info.

'The Linux Foundation' - has nothing to do with it.

Apt is a package manager system. Used mainly by Debian and Debian based Distros. https://wiki.debian.org/Apt

> Advanced Package Tool, or APT, is a free-software user interface that works with core libraries to handle the installation and removal of software on Debian, Ubuntu, and related Linux distributions.[4] APT simplifies the process of managing software on Unix-like computer systems by automating the retrieval, configuration and installation of software packages, either from precompiled files or by compiling source code.[4]

The GUI software tools for Ubuntu and other variants, use the apt stuff in the background.

The Gui store may not show all the available programs. It may be a Curated list. (i never use the GUI store)

The Snaptic tool - is a more powerful front end to the Package manager system. I use it quite often. But i typically do the command line.

for the apt system i typically do a...

sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade

and then check what its going to do, then let it upgrade.

Snap and Flatpak have their own update commands. Snap i think auto updates. Not sure about flatpak.

mplayer is compiled with smb support and the binary package therefore depends on smbclient. (I believe it will not startup without the libsmbclient library.)

You'd need to download the source and compile without the smb flag. You can use apt-src to do that the Debian way. The caveat is that you'd need to hold your custom package in apt and recompile each time the sources get updated with new features/security updates. (Easier on stable than testing/sid.)

Any updates should be done through PureOS' package manager. I'm not sure if they use [apt](

The releases are packaged at certain intervals, similar to Ubuntu/Debian releases. Releases can happen when there's enough packages out of date to warrant a new revision that has the latest stable packages at the release date.

Any updates should be done through PureOS' pacakge manager. I'm not sure if they use [apt](https://wiki.debian.org/Apt) or something else.

You should be able to download the source using apt-src. I'm not near my laptop at the moment so I'm unsure if the repos are already setup or if you need to add them.

See here for using the Debian apt-src tool to obtain a source package and build it. But the highlight is:

#apt-src update #apt-src install <package>

>This will download the vanilla source code (tarballed),the .dsc, a .changes file, and the unpacked debian source tree.

If you look at any package directory on the ftp server you can see where these source files come from, and in the same directory the pre-built binary packages that are signed and distributed.

Thanks for the information and the page being used is the Debian Wikipage: https://wiki.debian.org/apt-src

&#x200B;

>...changing the source package and rebuilding it as usual.

&#x200B;

What's the usual way of doing this? This isn't something I've ever needed to do with Debian.

&#x200B;

I have no idea what Revo is or does, but learn to use aptitude, apt-get, or Synaptic as was mentioned. These are all front-ends to APT, Debian's package management system.

https://wiki.debian.org/Apt

> I for one admit that have just very vague idea.

Read this: https://aptitude.alioth.debian.org/doc/en/

especially: https://aptitude.alioth.debian.org/doc/en/ch02s02s05.html

Details are here: https://wiki.debian.org/apt-src

Happy hunting

I finally found this:

https://wiki.debian.org/Apt

> "If you can’t find a package, you can look for it in apt-get.org, where you can find the line you need to add to your SourcesList to add the repository with the desired package."

Exactly what I was looking for!

Except for apt-get.org doesn't seem to exist as far as I can tell... Nor is there even any mention of it anywhere on google, except one post from some skin website where a guy asks if it's down, and the only response is someone saying 'there's already another post about this'.

???

The link you gave for 'Debian Packaging Intro' seems to be about taking upstream source code and turning it into a Debian package from scratch. Though if this has already been done, it seems the process is easier. From here:

1. apt-src install <package>
2. apt-src build <package>
3. Make any changes you might want.
4. dpkg --install <path to compiled .deb>

And if you don't actually want to make any changes, you can just do:

1. apt-src --build install <package>

Which will download the source, compile it, then install the package.