Apt Get

apt-get [--options] [command] [package]

Very popular command for DebianGnuLinux.

Say you decide you want office for your DebianGnuLinux box; you simply follow the following steps:

First you want to check whats new on the net, the command doesn't return any useful info, unless you encounter an error.

apt-get update

Then you want to check out which packages you can choose from:

apt-cache search office

That gives you a fairly long list of office (and esp. office related) packages.

Let's say you choose OpenOfficeOrg, and you want danish language:

apt-get install openoffice.org
apt-get install openoffice.org-l10n-da
apt-get install openoffice.org-hyphenation-da

Or simply:

apt-get install openoffice.org openoffice.org-l10n-da openoffice.org-hyphenation-da

To remove a package:

apt-get remove "package"

To remove and delete configuration files:

apt-get remove --purge "package" 

It might turn out, that in order to actually run the office package, you need some libraries or other files, if this is the case, AptGet will ask you if its ok to download and those also. When you answer yes, the download starts, and when it finishes, you might be asked some configuration questions, but I don't think there are any for OpenOfficeOrg.

Caveat: You have to be root to run this from the command-line. Hopefully someday it will be a wrapper to SuDo or something.

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GUI's ARE also available for apt, such as dselect, Aptitude, Synaptic, or Kpackage. This is important so that you don't spend all your time looking for packages through HTML websites.

This is doubly true since packages.debian.org is down a great deal of the time.

Aptitude is more a TUI (uses ncurses) than a full GUI. It also has a command line mode that is mostly compatible with apt-get eg. you can say

aptitude install "package"

It will also complain if you try to run it as a normal user and give you a chance to enter the root password instead of just failing.

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CategorySoftwareTool