• Matriks404@lemmy.world
    0·
    18 days ago

    Isn’t this explained in the manpages for apt(8) and apt-get(8)?

    Do people don’t read their manuals anymore?

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
    0·
    18 days ago

    This is one of the reasons I need to set up Linux at home. I use it at work but who knows what the flavor of the week is?

    At this point I can’t tell the difference between yum and rpm and apt and dnf

    • mlg@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      18 days ago

      Edit: realized you meant in the sense of hot swapping flavors after I typed out a whole explanation lol. Should start recommending niche distros and collect package managers like trading cards lol.

      –

      yum = dnf, dnf is just the newer version which was rewritten several times.

      apt is a weird attempt to “upgrade” apt-get with better user interface without messing with the compatibility of apt-get used by scripts and whatnot.

      Both of these are dependency handling package managers which do all the magic of installing required subpackges when you want something.

      rpm is the underlying system package manager which deals with the actual task of installing, removing, and generating packages in the .rpm format. It is analogous to Debian’s dpkg which uses the .deb format. It’s usually not used by the end user unless you need to play with a package directly like with a .rpm or .deb file.

      Hence why some distros (or people) have their own dependency package manager, like zypper on OpenSUSE (rpm) or Aptitude on Debian (deb).

      Although I think Aptitude might just be a fancy wrapper for apt lol.

    • embed_me@programming.dev
      0·
      18 days ago

      Me too but I am just zen at this point knowing the knowledge is one search away (I don’t even have to read the man)

  • Barometer3689@feddit.nl
    0·
    18 days ago

    jesus I feel old, and I am only in my 30s. I remember not having apt. How young are linux users nowadays?

    • splendoruranium@infosec.pubEnglish
      0·
      18 days ago

      jesus I feel old, and I am only in my 30s. I remember not having apt. How young are linux users nowadays?

      Well… how old were you when you got your first computer? That young.

      • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
        0·
        18 days ago

        Dicey proposition, some mid and older genX grew up before home computers were commonplace.

        When I was in my tweens, only really affluent people had computers. Schools had one single computer in a classroom or maybe a couple in a lab, and almost no one was computer literate.

        • hactar42@lemmy.world
          0·
          17 days ago

          Can confirm, I’m right on the edge of Gen-X and Millennials. I was the only one of my friends who had a computer pretty much all the way through elementary school. And the only reason we had computers in our house was because my dad was a computer engineer. By the time I was in highschool pretty much everyone had at least a family computer.

        • splendoruranium@infosec.pubEnglish
          0·
          18 days ago

          Nah a lot of people now think screen time is bad without evidence. Never would be allowed to get on a computer at 3-4.

          You had your own computer before you could read…?

        • dustyData@lemmy.world
          0·
          18 days ago

          Excessive screen time at 3 is bad, and we do have evidence. Computers from the 80s we grew up with have nothing in common with today’s highly advanced skinner boxes. It has been so since the age of TV, but today’s tech is worse. They fuck up cognitive and social development really bad. Using screens from time to time is fine, but having a tablet in your face every waking minute hurts even adults.

          • tehn00bi@lemmy.world
            0·
            18 days ago

            I follow the idea that phones/tablets are an individual experience, while tv is a social experience (assuming everyone is in the same room) so my kid has minimal tablet time, except on really long car trips. But has perhaps more than I would like tv time. But we are in there as a family. It’s very difficult in todays world with so much individual experience coming from a device.

    • bluewing@lemm.ee
      0·
      18 days ago

      I got tennis shoes older than you, (literally a pair of original Converse I bought new back in the 1970s). I was there before the original chains of Unix, DOS, and finally Linux were foraged. I saw OS2 die in battle. And I saw the dark time of when paper and pencils and slide rules vanished from this earth.

      The knowledge of apt-get and apt only matters to those warriors of the Cli when they wield the sword of sudo to vanquish the evils that exist when upgrading. For they do the bidding of the dark wizards of Dev, holders of the command su.

      Now that I have demonstrated my age by showing everyone how senile I am. ‘apt install’ is aimed at users to give a nicer response to it’s use. It need not be backwards compatible either. ‘Apt-get install’ is older and is meant to be usable as a lower level command and to work with other APT based tools.

      What does this mean for you today? Not a damn thing. I still always type: sudo apt-get install when using a deb based dsitro out of sheer habit. But it’s not needed the vast majority of the unwashed masses. So feel free to just type apt install to help prevent carpel finger nail.

        • bluewing@lemm.ee
          0·
          17 days ago

          That’s interesting, I did not know that! Thanks Stranger!

          Now, if you do not remember or know the “Converse. Limousines for the Feet” tagline. Then get of MY lawn yet again. 🤣

          Converse walked so Nike could run with their tagline.

          • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            17 days ago

            I don’t remember that Converse tagline … but back then I was wearing Sears Toughskins instead of Levis, that should make it clear how fashionable I was. “Limousines for the Feet” is a pretty laughable slogan, though, since chucks are about the least comfortable shoes in the history of humanity - even Ötzi’s fucking bird’s nest shoes were probably more comfortable.

  • dan@upvote.au
    0·
    18 days ago

    These days, apt is for humans whereas apt-get is for scripts. apt’s output is designed for humans and may change between releases, whereas apt-get is guaranteed to remain consistent to avoid breaking scripts.

    apt combines several commands together. For example, you can use it to install packages from both repos and local files (e.g. apt install ./foo.deb) whereas apt-get is only for packages from repos and you’d need to use dpkg for local packages.

          • Unbecredible@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            17 days ago

            Descheduling is a natural part of life, buddy. All us scripts are written into existence and our hearts set beating to the cadence of great Cron’s ever-ticking quartz clock. Until Cron takes us off his schedule and our memory is freed once again.

            Back to the silicon.

            • Joe Abercrombie

            The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

            Answer.

            That you are here—that life exists and identity,

            That the powerful OS goes on, and you may contribute a process.

            That the powerful OS goes on, and you may contribute a process.

            • Walt Whitman
    • nelson@lemmy.world
      0·
      18 days ago

      Huh TIL.

      I never considered trying to install a package from a local file through apt, but always dpkg. End result is the same of course. The web suggests dpkg rather than apt as well ( or at least the pages I ended up on ).

      • dan@upvote.au
        0·
        18 days ago

        apt and apt-get both use dpkg internally, but these days it’s essentially seen as an implementation detail that regular users don’t need to know about.

        dpkg doesn’t resolve dependencies (that’s a feature of apt) which means that if you install a Debian package with dpkg, you’ll have to manually install all dependencies first, and they won’t be marked as automatically installed (so autoremove won’t remove them if they’re not needed any more). Using apt solves that.

        The web suggests dpkg because either the articles are old, or they’re based on outdated knowledge :)

        • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
          0·
          18 days ago

          @fluckx@lemmy.world

          dpkg doesn’t resolve dependencies (that’s a feature of apt) which means that if you install a Debian package with dpkg, you’ll have to manually install all dependencies first, and they won’t be marked as automatically installed

          Usually installing a manually downloaded package and its dependencies works like this:
          # dpkg -i package-file.deb
          # apt-get -f install

          So apt-get can be used to install missing dependencies afterwards while marking them as automatically installed.

          • dan@upvote.au
            0·
            17 days ago

            That works, but why do that when you could just do apt install ./package-file.deb?

      • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        18 days ago

        Discord is distributed as a .Deb if you don’t use flatpak because they can’t be bothered to set up a repo.

        The very useful thing about local file install is that unlike dpkg, apt will install dependencies automatically

        • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
          0·
          18 days ago

          Thats weird, they do have an arch official package and that’s the one they usually don’t make because AUR is a thing. Have you checked lately?

          • bisby@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            18 days ago

            An “official” arch package? The arch package is packaged by the arch maintainers. https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/discord

            The maintainers of the PKGBUILD are all arch maintainers, which just downloads the generic .tar.gz file discord provides and puts it in all the places you need for you.

            The “official” arch packages are just PKGBUILDs like the AUR, except prebuilt, managed (and signed) by the arch team.

            • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
              0·
              18 days ago

              I didn’t know, thanks! I guess in hindsight I meant “official” as in, it’s not just some rando, I can trust it won’t break, and I don’t have to manually download the stuff every time xD

              • bisby@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                17 days ago

                Yep! All those things are true, but it’s due to the hard work of the archlinux team and not discord doing anything valuable. The debian/ubuntu/etc team could probably repackage the tar.xz or include the deb file in their official repos if they wanted. They just don’t. And given how simple the workaround is, i don’t really blame them. Debian isn’t going to ship something that will require constant updating to work with remote servers, and ubuntu probably just wants you to use a snap anyway.

                The archlinux team is just pretty cool.

          • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            18 days ago

            I have checked on every new update because their fuckass client apparently can’t update itself in big 2025 and instead just opens your browser to the download url because that’ll convince people that Linux is great.

            • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
              0·
              18 days ago

              Updating itself isn’t really the Linux way of things. The Linux way is to have a centralised place like pacman or apt and to download everything at once. Every app having their own download and update system sounds like a nightmare.

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
    0·
    17 days ago

    apt is for like when you want to, and apt get is the other way to get the apt. And then if it doesn’t, sudo apt will, or then sudo apt get. Like if you’re just doing an apt, and then you also need to apt get, you can.

    • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      16 days ago
      1. You can’t just be up there and just doin’ a apt like that.

      1a. An apt-get is when you

      1b. Okay well listen. An apt-get is when you get the

      1c. Let me start over

      1c-a. The user is not allowed to do a motion to the, uh, kernel, that prohibits the kernel from doing, you know, just trying to get the apt. You can’t do that.

      1c-b. Once the user is in the terminal, he can’t be over here and say to the packag, like, “I’m gonna get ya! I’m gonna apt you out! You better watch your butt!” and then just be like he didn’t even do that.

      1c-b(1). Like, if you’re about to apt and then don’t get, you have to still apt. You cannot not apt. Does that make any sense?

      1c-b(2). You gotta be, typing motion of the command, and then, until you just apt-get it.

  • Rose@slrpnk.net
    0·
    17 days ago

    Me, I’m old, so I just keep using apt-get, because that’s all we had back in the day, and I never bothered to learn what’s the big deal about apt. It’s just a frontend, isn’t it?

  • truthfultemporarily@feddit.org
    0·
    18 days ago

    The binary is called apt-get. There are others like apt-cache etc.

    Apt is a script that just figures out which binary to use and passes the arguments on.

    • apt update -> apt-get update
    • apt policy -> apt-cache policy
    • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
      0·
      18 days ago

      You know, I thought I knew why, but this was new information to me, so I guess I didn’t.

      Thanks for sharing this concise explico!

  • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
    0·
    17 days ago

    How my brain distinguishes them:

    apt-get when you want full verbose output

    apt when you want to feel fancy with progress bars and colours

    • mrsingh@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      17 days ago

      apt install nano (simple, clean)

      apt-get install nano (works too, but more detailed output)

      Apt-get give more technical output , helps in scripting .

  • keen@lemmy.world
    0·
    17 days ago

    Use apt in the shell and use apt-get in scripts, because apt has beautiful shell output but it isn’t script safe

  • RustyNova@lemmy.world
    0·
    18 days ago

    I got mistaken. See replies for explanation

    =======

    Apt: get whatever is in the cached package list

    Apt-get: lookup the package to see the latest version and get that one

    Unless you always apt update, apt-get is the go to choice for modern day Linux

    There’s also the apt-apt command, who triggers any audiophile to start complaining about mainstream music quality these days

        • mutual_ayed@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          0·
          18 days ago

          Oh sorry.

          install is already a part of make/cmake as well, so it’d break any of those workflows also.

          The joke I thought I was making was “I’m too lazy to type out what I want, let’s just break the system instead.”

    • superkret@feddit.org
      0·
      18 days ago

      I disagree. According to Debian’s own documentation, apt is a newer front-end for your daily CLI updating and installing needs.
      It has simplified syntax, and combines the most-used functions and options.
      It is not meant for use in scripts, cause the syntax may change between versions.

      The dependency-solver in the back-end is identical.

      tl/dr:
      apt is shorter to type and will have prettier output, starting with Debian 13.
      Use apt-get inside scripts.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        18 days ago

        My personal experience is that apt-get will absolutely miss packages that apt will capture.

        I was actually surprised by that about six months ago and finally switched over to apt after years of apt-get.

        • superkret@feddit.org
          0·
          18 days ago

          That’s actually one of the reasons I switched from Debian to Arch.
          Dependency resolution shouldn’t differ based on which front-end you use.
          Debian has dpkg, aptitude, apt-get, apt, synaptic, the Software Center…
          Fedora has rpm, dnf, yum. SUSE adds a couple more. I don’t get it.
          A linux distro should have one package manager, doing different stuff with it should be done via different commands/options inside it.

          • Rhaedas@fedia.io
            0·
            18 days ago

            As a (still) Linux novice, this is something that I noticed with later distributions but never thought about your valid point. I did always wonder why there should be different places to install things in the same OS. It would probably be fine if they handled things the same, but then all you’re doing is changing the UI. It never “felt” like they did things the same.

            • superkret@feddit.org
              0·
              18 days ago

              It can’t. I use a very simple script to combine updates and the basics of system maintenance:

              #!/usr/bin/env bash
systemctl --failed -q
yay -Pw
sudo pacman -Syu
flatpak update
flatpak uninstall --unused
pacman -Qqnte > ~/.local/share/applications/pkglist.txt
pacman -Qqdtt > ~/.local/share/applications/optdeplist.txt
pacman -Qqem > ~/.local/share/applications/foreignpkglist.txt
pacman -Qtd
pacman -Qm | grep -v yay-bin
sudo find /etc -name *.pac*
yay -Ps | grep Cache