Package manager (Debian/Ubuntu).
Syntax
aptitude [options...] autoclean
aptitude [options...] clean
aptitude [options...] forget-new
aptitude [options...] keep-all
aptitude [options...] update
aptitude [options...] safe-upgrade
aptitude [options...] changelog packages...
aptitude [options...] full-upgrade packages...
aptitude [options...] forbid-version packages...
aptitude [options...] hold packages...
aptitude [options...] install packages...
aptitude [options...] markauto packages...
aptitude [options...] purge packages...
aptitude [options...] reinstall packages...
aptitude [options...] remove packages...
aptitude [options...] show packages...
aptitude [options...] unhold packages...
aptitude [options...] unmarkauto packages...
aptitude [options...] build-dep packages...
aptitude [options...] build-depends packages...
aptitude extract-cache-subset output-directory packages...
aptitude [options...] search patterns...
aptitude [options...] add-user-tag tag packages...
aptitude [options...] remove-user-tag tag packages...
aptitude [options...] {why | why-not} [patterns...] package
aptitude [-S fname] [-u | -i]
aptitude help
Key
n.b. apt-get and aptitude and apt now share the same list of installed packages and so can be used interchangeably.
The following actions are available:
install
Install one or more packages. The packages should be listed after
the "install" command; if a package name contains a tilde character
("~") or a question mark ("?"), it will be treated as a search
pattern and every package matching the pattern will be installed
(see the section "Search Patterns" in the aptitude reference
manual).
To select a particular version of the package, append "=<version>"
to the package name: for instance, "aptitude install apt=0.3.1".
Similarly, to select a package from a particular archive, append
"/<archive>" to the package name: for instance, "aptitude install
apt/experimental".
Not every package listed on the command line has to be installed;
you can tell aptitude to do something different with a package by
appending an "override specifier" to the name of the package. For
example, aptitude remove wesnoth+ will install wesnoth, not remove
it. The following override specifiers are available:
<package>+
Install <package>.
<package>+M
Install <package> and immediately mark it as automatically
installed (note that if nothing depends on <package>, this will
cause it to be immediately removed).
<package>-
Remove <package>.
<package>_
Purge <package>: remove it and all its associated configuration
and data files.
<package>=
Place <package> on hold: cancel any active installation,
upgrade, or removal, and prevent this package from being
automatically upgraded in the future.
<package>:
Keep <package> at its current version: cancel any installation,
removal, or upgrade. Unlike "hold" (above) this does not
prevent automatic upgrades in the future.
<package>&M
Mark <package> as having been automatically installed.
<package>&m
Mark <package> as having been manually installed.
As a special case, "install" with no arguments will act on any
stored/pending actions.
Note
Once you enter Y at the final confirmation prompt, the
"install" command will modify aptitude’s stored information
about what actions to perform. Therefore, if you issue (e.g.)
the command "aptitude install foo bar" and then exit the
installation once aptitude has started downloading and
installing packages, you will need to run "aptitude remove foo
bar" to cancel that order.
remove, purge, hold, unhold, keep, reinstall
These commands are the same as "install", but apply the named
action to all packages given on the command line for which it is
not overridden. The difference between hold and keep is that hold
will cause a package to be ignored by future safe-upgrade or
full-upgrade commands, while keep merely cancels any scheduled
actions on the package. unhold will allow a package to be upgraded
by future safe-upgrade or full-upgrade commands, without otherwise
altering its state.
For instance, "aptitude remove '~ndeity'" will remove all packages
whose name contains "deity".
markauto, unmarkauto
Mark packages as automatically installed or manually installed,
respectively. Packages are specified in exactly the same way as for
the "install" command. For instance, "aptitude markauto '~slibs'"
will mark all packages in the "libs" section as having been
automatically installed.
For more information on automatically installed packages, see the
section "Managing Automatically Installed Packages" in the aptitude
reference manual.
build-depends, build-dep
Satisfy the build-dependencies of a package. Each package name may
be a source package, in which case the build dependencies of that
source package are installed; otherwise, binary packages are found
in the same way as for the "install" command, and the
build-dependencies of the source packages that build those binary
packages are satisfied.
If the command-line parameter --arch-only is present, only
architecture-dependent build dependencies (i.e., not
Build-Depends-Indep or Build-Conflicts-Indep) will be obeyed.
forbid-version
Forbid a package from being upgraded to a particular version. This
will prevent aptitude from automatically upgrading to this version,
but will allow automatic upgrades to future versions. By default,
aptitude will select the version to which the package would
normally be upgraded; you can override this selection by appending
"=<version>" to the package name: for instance, "aptitude
forbid-version vim=1.2.3.broken-4".
This command is useful for avoiding broken versions of packages
without having to set and clear manual holds. If you decide you
really want the forbidden version after all, the "install" command
will remove the ban.
update
Updates the list of available packages from the apt sources (this
is equivalent to "apt-get update")
safe-upgrade
Upgrades installed packages to their most recent version. Installed
packages will not be removed unless they are unused (see the
section "Managing Automatically Installed Packages" in the aptitude
reference manual). Packages which are not currently installed may
be installed to resolve dependencies unless the --no-new-installs
command-line option is supplied.
It is sometimes necessary to remove one package in order to upgrade
another; this command is not able to upgrade packages in such
situations. Use the full-upgrade command to upgrade as many
packages as possible.
full-upgrade
Upgrades installed packages to their most recent version, removing
or installing packages as necessary. This command is less
conservative than safe-upgrade and thus more likely to perform
unwanted actions. However, it is capable of upgrading packages that
safe-upgrade cannot upgrade.
Note
This command was originally named dist-upgrade for historical
reasons, and aptitude still recognizes dist-upgrade as a
synonym for full-upgrade.
keep-all
Cancels all scheduled actions on all packages; any packages whose
sticky state indicates an installation, removal, or upgrade will
have this sticky state cleared.
forget-new
Forgets all internal information about what packages are "new"
(equivalent to pressing "f" when in visual mode).
search
Searches for packages matching one of the patterns supplied on the
command line. All packages which match any of the given patterns
will be displayed; for instance, "aptitude search '~N' edit" will
list all "new" packages and all packages whose name contains
"edit". For more information on search patterns, see the section
"Search Patterns" in the aptitude reference manual.
Unless you pass the -F option, the output of aptitude search will
look something like this:
i apt - Advanced front-end for dpkg
pi apt-build - frontend to apt to build, optimize and in
cp apt-file - APT package searching utility -- command-
ihA raptor-utils - Raptor RDF Parser utilities
Each search result is listed on a separate line. The first
character of each line indicates the current state of the package:
the most common states are p, meaning that no trace of the package
exists on the system, c, meaning that the package was deleted but
its configuration files remain on the system, i, meaning that the
package is installed, and v, meaning that the package is virtual.
The second character indicates the stored action (if any; otherwise
a blank space is displayed) to be performed on the package, with
the most common actions being i, meaning that the package will be
installed, d, meaning that the package will be deleted, and p,
meaning that the package and its configuration files will be
removed. If the third character is A, the package was automatically
installed.
For a complete list of the possible state and action flags, see the
section "Accessing Package Information" in the aptitude reference
guide. To customize the output of search, see the command-line
options -F and --sort.
show
Displays detailed information about one or more packages, listed
following the search command. If a package name contains a tilde
character ("~") or a question mark ("?"), it will be treated as a
search pattern and all matching packages will be displayed (see the
section "Search Patterns" in the aptitude reference manual).
If the verbosity level is 1 or greater (i.e., at least one -v is
present on the command-line), information about all versions of the
package is displayed. Otherwise, information about the "candidate
version" (the version that "aptitude install" would download) is
displayed.
You can display information about a different version of the
package by appending =<version> to the package name; you can
display the version from a particular archive by appending
/<archive> to the package name. If either of these is present, then
only the version you request will be displayed, regardless of the
verbosity level.
If the verbosity level is 1 or greater, the package’s architecture,
compressed size, filename, and md5sum fields will be displayed. If
the verbosity level is 2 or greater, the select version or versions
will be displayed once for each archive in which they are found.
add-user-tag, remove-user-tag
Adds a user tag to or removes a user tag from the selected group of
packages. If a package name contains a tilde ("~") or question mark
("?"), it is treated as a search pattern and the tag is added to or
removed from all the packages that match the pattern (see the
section "Search Patterns" in the aptitude reference manual).
User tags are arbitrary strings associated with a package. They can
be used with the ?user-tag(<tag>) search term, which will select
all the packages that have a user tag matching <tag>.
why, why-not
Explains the reason that a particular package should or cannot be
installed on the system.
This command searches for packages that require or conflict with
the given package. It displays a sequence of dependencies leading
to the target package, along with a note indicating the installed
state of each package in the dependency chain:
$ aptitude why kdepim
i nautilus-data Recommends nautilus
i A nautilus Recommends desktop-base (>= 0.2)
i A desktop-base Suggests gnome | kde | xfce4 | wmaker
p kde Depends kdepim (>= 4:3.4.3)
The command why finds a dependency chain that installs the package
named on the command line, as above. Note that the dependency that
aptitude produced in this case is only a suggestion. This is
because no package currently installed on this computer depends on
or recommends the kdepim package; if a stronger dependency were
available, aptitude would have displayed it.
In contrast, why-not finds a dependency chain leading to a conflict
with the target package:
$ aptitude why-not textopo
i ocaml-core Depends ocamlweb
i A ocamlweb Depends tetex-extra | texlive-latex-extra
i A texlive-latex-extra Conflicts textopo
If one or more <pattern>s are present, then aptitude will begin its
search at these patterns; that is, the first package in the chain
it prints will be a package matching the pattern in question. The
patterns are considered to be package names unless they contain a
tilde character ("~") or a question mark ("?"), in which case they
are treated as search patterns (see the section "Search Patterns"
in the aptitude reference manual).
If no patterns are present, then aptitude will search for
dependency chains beginning at manually installed packages. This
effectively shows the packages that have caused or would cause a
given package to be installed.
Note
aptitude why does not perform full dependency resolution; it
only displays direct relationships between packages. For
instance, if A requires B, C requires D, and B and C conflict,
"aptitude why-not D" will not produce the answer "A depends on
B, B conflicts with C, and D depends on C".
By default aptitude outputs only the "most installed, strongest,
tightest, shortest" dependency chain. That is, it looks for a chain
that only contains packages which are installed or will be
installed; it looks for the strongest possible dependencies under
that restriction; it looks for chains that avoid ORed dependencies
and Provides; and it looks for the shortest dependency chain
meeting those criteria. These rules are progressively weakened
until a match is found.
If the verbosity level is 1 or more, then all the explanations
aptitude can find will be displayed, in inverse order of relevance.
If the verbosity level is 2 or more, a truly excessive amount of
debugging information will be printed to standard output.
This command returns 0 if successful, 1 if no explanation could be
constructed, and -1 if an error occured.
clean
Removes all previously downloaded .deb files from the package cache
directory (usually /var/cache/apt/archives).
autoclean
Removes any cached packages which can no longer be downloaded. This
allows you to prevent a cache from growing out of control over time
without completely emptying it.
changelog
Downloads and displays the Debian changelog for each of the given
source or binary packages.
By default, the changelog for the version which would be installed
with "aptitude install" is downloaded. You can select a particular
version of a package by appending =<version> to the package name;
you can select the version from a particular archive by appending
/<archive> to the package name.
download
Downloads the .deb file for the given package to the current
directory. If a package name contains a tilde character ("~") or a
question mark ("?"), it will be treated as a search pattern and all
the matching packages will be downloaded (see the section "Search
Patterns" in the aptitude reference manual).
By default, the version which would be installed with "aptitude
install" is downloaded. You can select a particular version of a
package by appending =<version> to the package name; you can select
the version from a particular archive by appending /<archive> to
the package name.
extract-cache-subset
Copy the apt configuration directory (/etc/apt) and a subset of the
package database to the specified directory. If no packages are
listed, the entire package database is copied; otherwise only the
entries corresponding to the named packages are copied. Each
package name can be a search pattern, and all the packages matching
that pattern will be selected (see the section "Search Patterns" in
the aptitude reference manual). Any existing package database files
in the output directory will be overwritten.
Dependencies in binary package stanzas will be rewritten to remove
references to packages not in the selected set.
help
Displays a brief summary of the available commands and options.
OPTIONS
The following options can be used to modify the behavior of the actions
described above. Note that while all options will be accepted for all
commands, some options don’t apply to particular commands and will be
ignored by those commands.
--add-user-tag <tag>
For full-upgrade, safe-upgrade, forbid-version, hold, install,
keep-all, markauto, unmarkauto, purge, reinstall, remove, unhold,
and unmarkauto: add the user tag <tag> to all packages that are
installed, removed, or upgraded by this command as if with the
add-user-tag command.
--add-user-tag-to <tag>,<pattern>
For full-upgrade, safe-upgrade forbid-version, hold, install,
keep-all, markauto, unmarkauto, purge, reinstall, remove, unhold,
and unmarkauto: add the user tag <tag> to all packages that match
<pattern> as if with the add-user-tag command. The pattern is a
search pattern as described in the section "Search Patterns" in the
aptitude reference manual.
For instance, aptitude safe-upgrade --add-user-tag-to
"new-installs,?action(install)" will add the tag new-installs to
all the packages installed by the safe-upgrade command.
--allow-new-upgrades
When the safe resolver is being used (i.e., --safe-resolver was
passed or Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver is set to true), allow
the dependency resolver to install upgrades for packages regardless
of the value of Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Upgrades.
--allow-new-installs
Allow the safe-upgrade command to install new packages; when the
safe resolver is being used (i.e., --safe-resolver was passed or
Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver is set to true), allow the
dependency resolver to install new packages. This option takes
effect regardless of the value of
Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Installs.
--allow-untrusted
Install packages from untrusted sources without prompting. You
should only use this if you know what you are doing, as it could
easily compromise your system’s security.
--disable-columns
This option causes aptitude search to output its results without
any special formatting. In particular: normally aptitude will add
whitespace or truncate search results in an attempt to fit its
results into vertical "columns". With this flag, each line will be
formed by replacing any format escapes in the format string with
the correponding text; column widths will be ignored.
For instance, the first few lines of output from "aptitude search
-F '%p %V' --disable-columns libedataserver" might be:
disksearch 1.2.1-3
hp-search-mac 0.1.3
libbsearch-ruby 1.5-5
libbsearch-ruby1.8 1.5-5
libclass-dbi-abstractsearch-perl 0.07-2
libdbix-fulltextsearch-perl 0.73-10
As in the above example, --disable-columns is often useful in
combination with a custom display format set using the command-line
option -F.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Disable-Columns.
-D, --show-deps
For commands that will install or remove packages (install,
full-upgrade, etc), show brief explanations of automatic
installations and removals.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Deps.
-d, --download-only
Download packages to the package cache as necessary, but do not
install or remove anything. By default, the package cache is stored
in /var/cache/apt/archives.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Download-Only.
-F <format>, --display-format <format>
Specify the format which should be used to display output from the
search command. For instance, passing "%p %V %v" for <format> will
display a package’s name, followed by its currently installed
version and its available version (see the section "Customizing how
packages are displayed" in the aptitude reference manual for more
information).
The command-line option --disable-columns is often useful in
combination with -F.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Package-Display-Format.
-f
Try hard to fix the dependencies of broken packages, even if it
means ignoring the actions requested on the command line.
This corresponds to the configuration item
Aptitude::CmdLine::Fix-Broken.
--full-resolver
When package dependency problems are encountered, use the default
"full" resolver to solve them. Unlike the "safe" resolver activated
by --safe-resolver, the full resolver will happily remove packages
to fulfill dependencies. It can resolve more situations than the
safe algorithm, but its solutions are more likely to be
undesirable.
This option can be used to force the use of the full resolver even
when Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver is true. The safe-upgrade
command never uses the full resolver and does not accept the
--full-resolver option.
-h, --help
Display a brief help message. Identical to the help action.
--no-new-installs
Prevent safe-upgrade from installing any new packages; when the
safe resolver is being used (i.e., --safe-resolver was passed or
Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver is set to true), forbid the
dependency resolver from installing new packages. This option takes
effect regardless of the value of
Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Installs.
This mimics the historical behavior of apt-get upgrade.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Safe-Upgrade::No-New-Installs.
--no-new-upgrades
When the safe resolver is being used (i.e., --safe-resolver was
passed or Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver is set to true), allow
the dependency resolver to install new packages regardless of the
value of Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Installs.
-O <order>, --sort <order>
Specify the order in which output from the search command should be
displayed. For instance, passing "installsize" for <order> will
list packages in order according to their size when installed (see
the section "Customizing how packages are sorted" in the aptitude
reference manual for more information).
-o <key>=<value>
Set a configuration file option directly; for instance, use -o
Aptitude::Log=/tmp/my-log to log aptitude’s actions to /tmp/my-log.
For more information on configuration file options, see the section
"Configuration file reference" in the aptitude reference manual.
-P, --prompt
Always display a prompt before downloading, installing or removing
packages, even when no actions other than those explicitly
requested will be performed.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Always-Prompt.
--purge-unused
Purge packages that are no longer required by any installed
package. This is equivalent to passing "-o
Aptitude::Purge-Unused=true" as a command-line argument.
-q[=<n>], --quiet[=<n>]
Suppress all incremental progress indicators, thus making the
output loggable. This can be supplied multiple times to make the
program quieter, but unlike apt-get, aptitude does not enable -y
when -q is supplied more than once.
The optional =<n> can be used to directly set the amount of
quietness (for instance, to override a setting in
/etc/apt/apt.conf); it causes the program to behave as if -q had
been passed exactly <n> times.
-R, --without-recommends
Do not treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new
packages (this overrides settings in /etc/apt/apt.conf and
~/.aptitude/config). Packages previously installed due to
recommendations will not be removed.
This corresponds to the pair of configuration options
Apt::Install-Recommends and Aptitude::Keep-Recommends.
-r, --with-recommends
Treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new packages
(this overrides settings in /etc/apt/apt.conf and
~/.aptitude/config).
This corresponds to the configuration option
Apt::Install-Recommends
--remove-user-tag <tag>
For full-upgrade, safe-upgrade forbid-version, hold, install,
keep-all, markauto, unmarkauto, purge, reinstall, remove, unhold,
and unmarkauto: remove the user tag <tag> from all packages that
are installed, removed, or upgraded by this command as if with the
add-user-tag command.
--remove-user-tag-from <tag>,<pattern>
For full-upgrade, safe-upgrade forbid-version, hold, install,
keep-all, markauto, unmarkauto, purge, reinstall, remove, unhold,
and unmarkauto: remove the user tag <tag> from all packages that
match <pattern> as if with the remove-user-tag command. The pattern
is a search pattern as described in the section "Search Patterns"
in the aptitude reference manual.
For instance, aptitude safe-upgrade --remove-user-tag-from
"not-upgraded,?action(upgrade)" will remove the not-upgraded tag
from all packages that the safe-upgrade command is able to upgrade.
-s, --simulate
In command-line mode, print the actions that would normally be
performed, but don’t actually perform them. This does not require
root privileges. In the visual interface, always open the cache in
read-only mode regardless of whether you are root.
This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::Simulate.
--safe-resolver
When package dependency problems are encountered, use a "safe"
algorithm to solve them. This resolver attempts to preserve as many
of your choices as possible; it will never remove a package or
install a version of a package other than the package’s default
candidate version. It is the same algorithm used in safe-upgrade;
indeed, aptitude --safe-resolver full-upgrade is equivalent to
aptitude safe-upgrade. Because safe-upgrade always uses the safe
resolver, it does not accept the --safe-resolver flag.
This option is equivalent to setting the configuration variable
Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver to true.
--schedule-only
For commands that modify package states, schedule operations to be
performed in the future, but don’t perform them. You can execute
scheduled actions by running aptitude install with no arguments.
This is equivalent to making the corresponding selections in visual
mode, then exiting the program normally.
For instance, aptitude --schedule-only install evolution will
schedule the evolution package for later installation.
-t <release>, --target-release <release>
Set the release from which packages should be installed. For
instance, "aptitude -t experimental ..." will install packages
from the experimental distribution unless you specify otherwise.
For the command-line actions "changelog", "download", and "show",
this is equivalent to appending /<release> to each package named on
the command-line; for other commands, this will affect the default
candidate version of packages according to the rules described in
apt_preferences(5).
This corresponds to the configuration item APT::Default-Release.
-V, --show-versions
Show which versions of packages will be installed.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Versions.
-v, --verbose
Causes some commands (for instance, show) to display extra
information. This can be supplied multiple times to get more and
more information.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Verbose.
--version
Display the version of aptitude and some information about how it
was compiled.
--visual-preview
When installing or removing packages from the command line, instead
of displaying the usual prompt, start up the visual interface and
display its preview screen.
-W, --show-why
In the preview displayed before packages are installed or removed,
show which manually installed package requires each automatically
installed package. For instance:
$ aptitude --show-why install mediawiki
...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libapache2-mod-php5{a} (for mediawiki) mediawiki php5{a} (for mediawiki)
php5-cli{a} (for mediawiki) php5-common{a} (for mediawiki)
php5-mysql{a} (for mediawiki)
When combined with -v or a non-zero value for
Aptitude::CmdLine::Verbose, this displays the entire chain of
dependencies that lead each package to be installed. For instance:
$ aptitude -v --show-why install libdb4.2-dev
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libdb4.2{a} (libdb4.2-dev D: libdb4.2) libdb4.2-dev
The following packages will be REMOVED:
libdb4.4-dev{a} (libdb4.2-dev C: libdb-dev P<- libdb-dev)
This option will also describe why packages are being removed, as
shown above. In this example, libdb4.2-dev conflicts with
libdb-dev, which is provided by libdb-dev.
This argument corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Why and displays the same information that
is computed by aptitude why and aptitude why-not.
-w <width>, --width <width>
Specify the display width which should be used for output from the
search command (by default, the terminal width is used).
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Package-Display-Width
-y, --assume-yes
When a yes/no prompt would be presented, assume that the user
entered "yes". In particular, suppresses the prompt that appears
when installing, upgrading, or removing packages. Prompts for
"dangerous" actions, such as removing essential packages, will
still be displayed. This option overrides -P.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Assume-Yes.
-Z
Show how much disk space will be used or freed by the individual
packages being installed, upgraded, or removed.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Size-Changes.
The following options apply to the visual mode of the program, but are
primarily for internal use; you generally won’t need to use them
yourself.
-i
Displays a download preview when the program starts (equivalent to
starting the program and immediately pressing "g"). You cannot use
this option and "-u" at the same time.
-S <fname>
Loads the extended state information from <fname> instead of the
standard state file.
-u
Begins updating the package lists as soon as the program starts.
You cannot use this option and -i at the same time.
ENVIRONMENT
HOME If $HOME/.aptitude exists, aptitude will store its configuration file in $HOME/.aptitude/config. Otherwise, it will look up the current user’s home directory using getpwuid(2) and place its configuration file there. PAGER If this environment variable is set, aptitude will use it to display changelogs when "aptitude changelog" is invoked. If not set, it defaults to more. TMP If TMPDIR is unset, aptitude will store its temporary files in TMP if that variable is set. Otherwise, it will store them in /tmp. TMPDIR aptitude will store its temporary files in the directory indicated by this environment variable. If TMPDIR is not set, then TMP will be used; if TMP is also unset, then aptitude will use /tmp.
FILES
/var/lib/aptitude/pkgstates The file in which stored package states and some package flags are stored. /etc/apt/apt.conf, /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/*, ~/.aptitude/config The configuration files for aptitude. ~/.aptitude/config overrides /etc/apt/apt.conf. See apt.conf(5) for documentation of the format and contents of these files.
"Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside" ~ Alexander Pope
dpkg - Package manager (Debian/Ubuntu).
apt-get - Package Manager.
Synaptic Package Manager - GUI for APT (In Ubuntu this is under System > Administration).
Tasksel - Debian/Ubuntu tool to install multiple related packages, typically on servers.
Equivalent Windows command: Package managers