Audience
IT teams in need of a Package Manager solution
About Aptitude
Aptitude is an Ncurses and command-line based front-end to numerous Apt libraries, which are also used by Apt, the default Debian package manager. Aptitude is text-based and run from a terminal. A mutt-like syntax for matching packages in a flexible manner. Mark packages as "automatically installed" or "manually installed" so that packages can be auto-removed when no longer required (feature available in Apt, too, since quite a few Debian releases). Preview of actions about to be taken with different colors marking different actions. The ability to interactively retrieve and display the Debian changelog of all available official packages. Score-based dependency resolver which is more suitable for interactive dependency resolution with additional hints from the user like "I don't want that part of the solution but keep that other part of the solution for your next try". Apt's dependency resolver on the other hand is optimized for good "one-shot" solutions.
Other Popular Alternatives & Related Software
APT
This software lets you follow the evolution of a Debian-based distribution both with email updates and with a comprehensive web interface. Having all the information about packages conveniently available in a single place is particularly interesting for package maintainers, contributors, advanced users, etc.
Learn more about APT
Debian
Debian is a free, open-source Linux operating system developed and maintained by a global community of volunteers. The distribution provides a stable and customizable computing environment for desktop computers, laptops, servers, cloud infrastructure, and embedded systems. Debian includes more than 70,000 software packages covering productivity applications, programming tools, databases, web servers, networking utilities, and system administration. Its Advanced Package Tool (APT) simplifies software installation, dependency management, security updates, and system upgrades. Users can choose from desktop environments such as GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce, Cinnamon, MATE, and LXQt or configure lightweight systems without a graphical interface. Debian supports multiple hardware architectures and offers Stable, Testing, and Unstable development branches to accommodate different requirements for reliability and software availability.
Learn more about Debian
fpm
fpm is a tool that lets you easily create packages for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, Arch Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, and more! fpm isn’t a new packaging system, it’s a tool to help you make packages for existing systems with less effort. It does this by offering a command-line interface to allow you to create packages easily. FPM is written in ruby and can be installed using gem. For some package formats (like rpm and snap), you will need certain packages installed to build them. Some package formats require other tools to be installed on your machine to be built; especially if you are building a package for another operating system/distribution. FPM takes your program and builds packages that can be installed easily on various operating systems. It can take any nodejs package, ruby gem, or even a python package and turn it into a deb, rpm, pacman, etc. package.
Learn more about fpm
DPKG
DPKG is a tool to install, build, remove and manage Debian packages. The primary and more user-friendly front-end for DPKG is aptitude. DPKG itself is controlled entirely via command line parameters, which consist of exactly one action and zero or more options. The action parameter tells DPKG what to do and options control the behavior of the action in some way. DPKG can also be used as a front-end to DPKG-deb(1) and DPKG-query. The list of supported actions can be found later on in the actions section. If any such action is encountered DPKG just runs DPKG-deb or DPKG-query with the parameters given to it, but no specific options are currently passed to them, to use any such option the back-ends need to be called directly. DPKG maintains some usable information about available packages. The information is divided into three classes, states, selection states, and flags. These values are intended to be changed mainly with dselect.
Learn more about DPKG
Pricing
Starting Price:
Free
Free Version:
Free Version available.
Integrations
Company Information
Debian
wiki.debian.org/Aptitude
Videos and Screen Captures
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Product Details
Platforms Supported
Linux
Training
Documentation
Support
Online
Aptitude Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What kinds of users and organization types does Aptitude work with?
Aptitude works with these users and organization types: Mid Size Business, Small Business, Enterprise, Freelance, Nonprofit, Government, and Startup.
Q: What languages does Aptitude support in their product?
Aptitude supports these languages: English.
Q: What kind of support options does Aptitude offer?
Aptitude offers support via online.
Q: What other applications or services does Aptitude integrate with?
Aptitude integrates with: Debian.
Q: What type of training does Aptitude provide?
Aptitude provides training in the form of documentation.
Q: How much does Aptitude cost?
Pricing for Aptitude starts at Free.
