转自What is the difference between dpkg and aptitude/apt-get?
dpkg
only installs a package, so doing dpkg -i packageName.deb
will only install this Deb package, and will notify you of any dependencies that need to be installed, but it will not install them, and it willnot configure the packageName.deb
because well...the dependencies are not there.
apt-get
is a Package Management System that handles the installation of Deb packages on Debian-based Linux distributions. A Package Management System is a set of tools that will help you install, remove, and change packages easily. So apt-get
is like a clever dpkg
.
I like to think of the timeline this way:
They came up with a way to "store" the files of an application in a "package" so that it can be easily installed. So, the Deb package (.deb
extension file) was born.
A
.deb
file contains the files needed by an application to run, as well as (I like to call it) "meta-data" that holds other information, such as the names of the dependencies the application needs. If you want to see the contents of a.deb
file, you can use the commanddpkg -c packageName.deb
, and if you want to see this "meta-data" information, use the commanddpkg -I pacakgeName.deb
(and if you want to only see the dependencies, dodpkg -I packageName.deb | grep Depends
).
They needed a tool to install these .deb
files, so they came up with the dpkg
tool. This tool, however, will just install the .deb
file, but will not install its dependencies because it doesn't have those files and it does not have access to "repositories" to go pull the dependencies from.
apt-get
, which automates the problems in the previous point. Underneath the hood, apt-get
is basically dpkg
(so apt-get
is a front-end for dpkg
), but a clever one that will look for the dependencies and install them. It even looks at the currently installed dependencies and determines ones that are not being used by any other packages, and will inform you that you can remove them. aptitude
then came along, and it's nothing but a front-end for apt-get
[so, it's a front-end of a front-end]. aptitude
is a UI (user interface) for apt-get
. If you want to see this UI, simply type aptitude
in the terminal; that's aptitude
, that's what it was originally created for. aptitude
leverages the apt
tools to provide more options and perks than apt-get
. For example, aptitude
will automatically remove eligible packages, while apt-get
needs a separate command to do so. But, in the end, doing sudo aptitude install packageName.deb
is the same as sudo apt-get install packageName.deb
. There might be subtle differences here and there that I do not know about, but they will both look for the dependencies and do all that stuff. You can read the answer here for more information on the differences between aptitude
and apt-get
.
Also, aptitude
does not have Super Cow Powers.
aptitude
might not be installed by default. To install it, do sudo apt-get install aptitude
.
The following information doesn't really directly answer "What is the difference between dpkg and aptitude/apt-get?" but it contributes to the big picture.
From Carlos Campderrós' comment below:
gdebi
is another tool that is kind of a mixture between apt-get
and aptitude
. When you use it to install a .deb
package (gdebi packageName.deb
), it will identify the missing dependencies, install them using apt-get
, and then finally install and configure the package using dpkg
. It even has a simple and neat GUI that gives you information about the .deb
package, the files included in the package, and what dependencies need to be installed. To see this GUI, you would do gdebi-gtk packageName.deb
. You can give gdebi
a try by installing it with sudo apt-get install gdebi
or click this: gdebi .
I don't want to confuse anyone, but just to give you another part of the picture, there is another popular Linux package format called RPM, and its files have the .rpm
extension. This package format is used onRPM-based Linux distributions (such as Red Hat, CentOS, and Fedora). They use the command rpm
to install a package, and yum
is the front-end for it, it's the clever one. So their .rpm
files are our .deb
files, their rpm
tool is our dpkg
tool, and their yum
is our apt-get
.
From Paddy Landau's comment below:
alien
is a tool that converts between .rpm
and .deb
packages. So if you ever fall into the situation where you have an .rpm
package, and you want to install in on your Ubuntu (or any other Debian-based distro), you can use the command alien rpm_packageName.rpm
to convert it to .deb
, and then install it using dpkg
. You can do the reverse (convert .deb
to .rpm
) using alien -r packageName.deb
.