APT (Advanced Packaging Tool) For Debian/Ubuntu/Mint

APT stands for Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) which is replacement for apt-get, like how DNF came to picture instead of YUM. It’s feature rich command-line tools with included all the futures in one command (APT) such as apt-cache, apt-search, dpkg, apt-cdrom, apt-config, apt-key, etc..,. and several other unique features. For example we can easily install .dpkg packages through APT but we can’t do through Apt-Get similar more features are included into APT command. APT-GET replaced by APT Due to lock of futures missing in apt-get which was not solved.
APT is not a new utility and this was released on July 30, 2004 initially and i don’t know why? since initial this was not recognized but my guess due to lock of improvement i thing so. Anyhow finally it’s become one of the best New Package Management tool for Debian Based Systems. APT will automatically install the necessary dependencies or delete the packages which depend on the package that is being removed.
APT is a powerful command-line tool for installing, downloading, removing, searching and managing as well as querying information about packages as a low-level access to all features of the libapt-pkg library. It’s contains some less used command-line utilities related to package management.
which is used to automatically download, install new software packages, upgrade existing software packages, update the package list index, and to upgrade the entire Debian based systems. Some other package manger utilities which are being used widely in Linux are yum, dnf, apt-get, dpkg, rpm, Zypper, pacman, urpmi, pkg, apt, etc.,
Now, i’m going to play on our Linux Mint 17.3 (Rosa) box to explain and cover mostly used Apt commands with examples.
Note : On Debian & Ubuntu you will get very less options based on APT but you will get all option on Linux Mint.

1) Common syntax/file location for APT

See below for common syntax/file location of APT command.
[General syntax for apt]

apt [options] [pkg1] [pkg2] ...

[most popular apt commands]
[install remove update upgrade full-upgrade purge clean]

[apt config file location]
/etc/apt/apt.conf

[apt Package file location]
/etc/apt/sources.list
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/

[apt cached file location]
/var/cache/apt

[apt history file location]
/var/log/apt/history.log

2) Install a Package or packages

Use the below command to install any package or packages on your system. In this case i’m going to install apache, MariaDB-server, MariaDB-client. Every time APT ask your confirmation to install the corresponding package. if you want to avoid the confirmation you can do by this adding -y option with APT.

[Install a single package]
$ sudo apt install apache2
or
$ sudo apt -y install apache2

[Install more than one packages]
$ sudo apt install MariaDB-server MariaDB-client
or
$ sudo apt -y install MariaDB-server MariaDB-client

3) Remove a Package or packages

Use the below command to remove/erase any package or packages on your system. In this case I’m going to remove nano & aria2.

[Remove a single package]
$ sudo apt remove nano
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  nano
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
After this operation, 614 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

[Remove more than one packages]
$ sudo apt remove nano aria2
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  libc-ares2
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove it.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  aria2 nano
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
After this operation, 5,089 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

Remove a package with all files]
$ sudo apt purge nano
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  nano*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
After this operation, 614 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

[Alternate command to Remove a package with all files]
$ sudo apt remove --purge nano
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  nano*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
After this operation, 614 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

[This command removes packages that were installed by other packages and are no longer needed]
$ sudo apt autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 9 not upgraded.

[This command removes an installed package and dependencies]
$ sudo apt autoremove nano
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package 'nano' is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 9 not upgraded.

4) update a Package or packages

Use the below command to update any package or packages on your system. In this case I’m going to update nano & aria2 to latest version.

[update single package]
$ sudo apt install --only-upgrade nano
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
nano is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 9 not upgraded.

[update more than one packages]
$ sudo apt install --only-upgrade nano aria2

5) Search a package

If you don’t know the exact package name which you want to install, Use the search option it will return the matching string. In this case I’m going to search ftpd.

[Search a package]
$ sudo apt search ftpd
p   atftpd                          - advanced TFTP server                      
p   atftpd:i386                     - advanced TFTP server                      
p   ftpd                            - File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server       
p   ftpd:i386                       - File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server       
p   ftpd-ssl                        - FTP server with SSL encryption support    
p   ftpd-ssl:i386                   - FTP server with SSL encryption support    
p   gadmin-proftpd                  - GTK+ configuration tool for proftpd       
p   gadmin-proftpd:i386             - GTK+ configuration tool for proftpd       
p   gadmin-proftpd-dbg              - GTK+ configuration tool for proftpd debug 
p   gadmin-proftpd-dbg:i386         - GTK+ configuration tool for proftpd debug

The above output clearly shows matching string for ftpd.

6) Check package information

If you want to know the package detailed information before proceeding with the installation. Use the below command, it will give full information about the package like package version, size, repo name, etc..

[print package info]
$ sudo apt show nano
Package: nano
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 2.2.6-1ubuntu1
Priority: standard
Section: editors
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers 
Architecture: amd64
Uncompressed Size: 614 k
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), libncursesw5 (>= 5.6+20070908), libtinfo5, dpkg (>=
         1.15.4) | install-info
Suggests: spell
Conflicts: pico, pico, nano
Breaks: alpine-pico (<= 2.00+dfsg-5), alpine-pico (<= 2.00+dfsg-5)
Replaces: pico, pico
Provides: editor
Description: small, friendly text editor inspired by Pico
 GNU nano is an easy-to-use text editor originally designed as a replacement for
 Pico, the ncurses-based editor from the non-free mailer package Pine (itself
 now available under the Apache License as Alpine). 
 
 However, nano also implements many features missing in pico, including: 
 * feature toggles; 
 * interactive search and replace (with regular expression support); 
 * go to line (and column) command; 
 * auto-indentation and color syntax-highlighting; 
 * filename tab-completion and support for multiple buffers; 
 * full internationalization support.
Homepage: http://www.nano-editor.org/

7) Update Repository Index

Use the below command to Update/Refresh Repository Index file which was mentioned under /etc/apt/sources.list or /etc/apt/preferences.

[Update Repository Index]
$ sudo apt update
Ign http://packages.linuxmint.com rosa/import Translation-en_IN                
Ign http://packages.linuxmint.com rosa/import Translation-en                   
Ign http://packages.linuxmint.com rosa/main Translation-en_IN                  
Ign http://packages.linuxmint.com rosa/main Translation-en                     
Ign http://packages.linuxmint.com rosa/upstream Translation-en_IN              
Ign http://packages.linuxmint.com rosa/upstream Translation-en                 
Fetched 2,349 kB in 14s (162 kB/s)                                             
Reading package lists... Done

8) Update Packages Use the below commands to Upgrade entire system packages or specific package to latest version.

[update entire system packages to latest version]
$ sudo apt upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  bash-completion firefox firefox-locale-en libexpat1 libexpat1:i386
  thunderbird thunderbird-gnome-support thunderbird-locale-en
  thunderbird-locale-en-us
9 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 79.0 MB of archives.
After this operation, 316 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

[This will perform like above command also upgrade the system to new Product Version]
$ sudo apt full-upgrade
or
$ sudo apt dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  bash-completion firefox firefox-locale-en libexpat1 libexpat1:i386
  thunderbird thunderbird-gnome-support thunderbird-locale-en
  thunderbird-locale-en-us
9 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 79.0 MB of archives.
After this operation, 316 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

9) Clean local repository packages

This command removes .deb files for packages that are no longer installed on your system, removing these files from /var/cache/apt/archives may regain a significant amount of diskspace.

[Clean local repository packages]
$ sudo apt clean

[Clean all local repository packages]
$ sudo apt autoclean
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done

10) Download a Package Without Installing

If you want to download any packages without installation, you can do it by adding "download" option with apt-get command.

[Download a Package Without Installing]
$ sudo apt download nano

11) How to Check Broken Dependencies

This command is a diagnostic tool. It does an update of the package lists and checks for broken dependencies.

# Check Broken Dependencies #
$ sudo apt check
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done

12) Fix Broken Packages

When you are facing "unmet dependencies" while installing package, run the below command to fix Broken Packages.

[Fix Broken Packages]
$ sudo apt -f install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 14 not upgraded.

13) List Packages

list is used to display a list of packages, such as installed packages, list of upgradable pacakges, list of packages with version.

[List installed Packages]
$ sudo apt list --installed
a11y-profile-manager-indicator/xenial,now 0.1.10-0ubuntu3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
account-plugin-facebook/xenial,xenial,now 0.12+16.04.20160126-0ubuntu1 all [installed,automatic]
account-plugin-flickr/xenial,xenial,now 0.12+16.04.20160126-0ubuntu1 all [installed,automatic]
account-plugin-google/xenial,xenial,now 0.12+16.04.20160126-0ubuntu1 all [installed,automatic]
accountsservice/now 0.6.40-2ubuntu11 amd64 [installed,upgradable to: 0.6.40-2ubuntu11.1]
acl/xenial,now 2.2.52-3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
acpi-support/xenial,now 0.142 amd64 [installed,automatic]

[List upgradable Packages]
$ sudo apt list --upgradable
accountsservice/xenial-updates 0.6.40-2ubuntu11.1 amd64 [upgradable from: 0.6.40-2ubuntu11]
adium-theme-ubuntu/xenial-updates,xenial-updates 0.3.4-0ubuntu1.1 all [upgradable from: 0.3.4-0ubuntu1]
appstream/xenial-updates 0.9.4-1ubuntu1 amd64 [upgradable from: 0.9.4-1]
fonts-noto-cjk/xenial-updates,xenial-updates 1:1.004+repack2-1~ubuntu1 all [upgradable from: 1:1.004+repack1-1]
language-selector-common/xenial-updates,xenial-updates 0.165.2 all [upgradable from: 0.165.1]
language-selector-gnome/xenial-updates,xenial-updates 0.165.2 all [upgradable from: 0.165.1]
libaccountsservice0/xenial-updates 0.6.40-2ubuntu11.1 amd64 [upgradable from: 0.6.40-2ubuntu11]
libappstream3/xenial-updates 0.9.4-1ubuntu1 amd64 [upgradable from: 0.9.4-1]

[List Packages with versions]
$ sudo apt list --all-versions
0ad/xenial 0.0.20-1 amd64
0ad-data/xenial,xenial 0.0.20-1 all
0ad-data-common/xenial,xenial 0.0.20-1 all
0ad-dbg/xenial 0.0.20-1 amd64
0install/xenial 2.10-2 amd64
0install-core/xenial 2.10-2 amd64
0xffff/xenial 0.6.1-3 amd64
2048-qt/xenial 0.1.6-1 amd64
2ping/xenial,xenial 3.2.1-1 all

14) List installed package Location

List files location belongs to particular package.

[List installed Packages]
$ sudo apt content nano
/.
/bin
/bin/nano
/bin/rnano
/etc
/etc/nanorc
/usr
/usr/bin
/usr/bin/nano
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc-base

15) Check package Dependencies

Check All Dependencies for particular Package.

[List installed Packages]
$ sudo apt depends nano
nano
  Depends: libc6
  Depends: libncursesw5
  Depends: libtinfo5
 |Depends: dpkg
    dpkg:i386
  Depends: install-info
    install-info:i386
  Suggests: spell
  Conflicts: 
  Conflicts: 
  Breaks: alpine-pico
  Breaks: alpine-pico:i386
  Replaces: 
  Replaces: 
  Conflicts: nano:i386

[List Recommended Missing Packages]
$ sudo apt recommends nano
No missing recommended packages were found for nano

16) Check installed package version

Print given package version by issuing below command.

[Print installed Package version]
$ sudo apt version nano
2.2.6-1ubuntu1

17) install deb package

Install deb package directly from apt command.

[Install deb Package]
$ sudo apt deb vivaldi-stable_1.0.435.40-1_i386.deb

18) Check Change Log of Package

If you want to know, what are the changes made on the packages before upgrading you can check using below command.

[Check Change Log of Package]
$ sudo apt changelog curl
curl (7.35.0-1ubuntu2.6) trusty-security; urgency=medium

  * SECURITY UPDATE: NTLM credentials not-checked for proxy connection
    re-use
    - debian/patches/CVE-2016-0755.patch: fix ConnectionExists to compare
      Proxy credentials in lib/url.c.
    - CVE-2016-0755

 -- Marc Deslauriers   Tue, 26 Jan 2016 12:10:58 -0500

curl (7.35.0-1ubuntu2.5) trusty-security; urgency=medium

19) Add PPA

To add all the third party's PPA to Linux Mint based systems, use the below command.

[Add PPA to system]
$ sudo apt add-repository ppa:fossfreedom/rhythmbox

20) Reinstall a Package

Download and (possibly) reinstall a currently installed package.

[Reinstall Package]
$ sudo apt reinstall nano
The following packages will be REINSTALLED:
  nano 
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 9 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/194 kB of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
(Reading database ... 177111 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../nano_2.2.6-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb ...

21) List Package contain file

$ apt contains nano
nano: /bin/nano
nano: /bin/rnano
nano: /etc/nanorc
nano: /usr/bin/nano
nano: /usr/share/doc-base/nano
nano: /usr/share/doc-base/nano-faq
nano: /usr/share/doc/nano
nano: /usr/share/doc/nano/AUTHORS
nano: /usr/share/doc/nano/BUGS.gz
nano: /usr/share/doc/nano/changelog.Debian.gz

22) How to get help from apt-get

If you want additional options, try below commands.

 # man page of apt-get #
$ man apt

# apt-get help, page #
$ apt --help
add-repository - Add entries to apt sources.list
autoclean - Erase old downloaded archive files
autoremove - Remove automatically all unused packages
build      - Build binary or source packages from sources
build-dep - Configure build-dependencies for source packages
changelog - View a package's changelog
check     - Verify that there are no broken dependencies
clean     - Erase downloaded archive files
contains   - List packages containing a file
content    - List files contained in a package
deb       - Install a .deb package
depends   - Show raw dependency information for a package
dist-upgrade - Perform an upgrade, possibly installing and removing packages
download    - Download the .deb file for a package
dselect-upgrade - Follow dselect selections
held  - List all held packages
help      - Show help for a command
hold  - Hold a package
install    - Install/upgrade packages
policy    - Show policy settings
purge     - Remove packages and their configuration files
recommends - List missing recommended packages for a particular package
rdepends  - Show reverse dependency information for a package
reinstall - Download and (possibly) reinstall a currently installed package
remove    - Remove packages
search    - Search for a package by name and/or expression
show      - Display detailed information about a package
source    - Download source archives
sources    - Edit /etc/apt/sources.list with nano
unhold  - Unhold a package
update    - Download lists of new/upgradable packages
upgrade   - Perform a safe upgrade
version   - Show the installed version of a package