If you are not new to Linux you probably have heard about apt (Advanced Packaging Tool) before.
It is used on Debian -based Linux distributions (such as, for example Ubuntu) and allows you to install, remove and update packages.
Here are a few examples on how to use the tool.
Updating your system using apt-get
On every newly installed Debian based Linux you want to run:
sudo apt-get update
This will synchronize the index of packages from the sources.
sudo apt-get upgrade
To upgrade the packages and system to the latest versions.
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
To perform the full system upgrade and handle dependencies.
You can also run a one-liner:
sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y && apt-get dist-upgrade -y
-y will answer “yes” to the question whether you want to proceed with update/upgrade.
Searching for packages and installing them
There is a command to search for packages called apt-cache. First you will need to update the repositories:
sudo apt-get update
Then you can search for the package that you need. In my example I am looking for workzeug addon for Python Flask.
apt-cache search python3 flask
I will then see a long list of packages that includes the one I am searching for:
python3-flask - micro web framework based on Werkzeug and Jinja2 - Python 3.x
Now I can install it using apt-get install:
sudo apt-get install python3-flask