The Debian Package Manager

Debian GNU/Linux provides several package management tools, primarily intended to facilitate the building, installation, and management of binary packages. In addition to Debian GNU/Linux, the tools described here also work on other Debian-based systems such as Xandros, Knoppix, Ubuntu, and numerous others.

Debian package names generally end in .deb. The Debian package management tools described here include apt, aptitude, dpkg, dpkg-deb, dselect, and synaptic.

Each of these tools is described in detail in the section "Debian Package Manager Command Summary,” later in this chapter.

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