CertiGuide to A+ (A+ 4 Real)  9  Chapter 5: The Linux Operating System       9  Package Management

rpm - Red Hat Package Manager 1 System Run Levels

apt is Debian’s Advanced Package Tool for managing, installing, and upgrading packages built with Debian’s packaging system with interesting extensions which have been built so that it will also handle packages built with the rpm tools. It uses a directory, /etc/apt, to hold its configuration information. The file /etc/apt/sources.list holds the locations where apt will look for packages. Packages can be installed using:

apt-get install package_name

Apt will attempt to download the package from the location given in the sources.list file and install it. If there are any dependence issues apt will attempt to download and install those also.

Packages can be updated using:

apt-get update

apt-get upgrade

apt will contact the server to resynchronize its package package index files from their sources. The indexes of available packages are fetched from the location specified in /etc/apt/sources.list. For example, when using a Debian archive, this command retrieves and scans the Packages.gz files, so that information about new and updated packages is available. An update should always be performed before an upgrade or dist-upgrade. Running the second command will cause the command apt to download and install the latest versions of the available packages.

apt-get dist-upgrade

In addition to performing the function of upgrade, apt also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions of packages; apt-get has a "smart" conflict resolution system, and it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages at the expense of less important ones if necessary.

rpm - Red Hat Package Manager 1 System Run Levels