When you run this command, you’ll see the information being retrieved from various servers. Updating the package database requires superuser privileges, so you’ll need to use sudo.

In fact, this is the first command you need to run on any Debian-based Linux system after a fresh install. If you don’t update this database, the system won’t know if there are newer packages available or not. Update the package database with apt-getĪpt-get basically works on a database of available packages. It’s better to have an understanding of it so that you can handle your Linux system in a slightly better way.

I am using Linux Mint in this tutorial, but you can use any other Ubuntu-based Linux distribution, such as elementary OS, Linux Lite, etc. Read this article to know more details about apt and apt-get commands. There is also a newer apt command on the scene which is a simpler version of apt-get. We’ll see all of these commands with examples later in this guide.

apt-get is for installing, upgrading, and cleaning packages, while apt-cache command is used for finding new packages. There are two main tools around APT: apt-get and apt-cache. You can use it to find and install new packages, upgrade packages, clean your packages, etc. This way, you don’t have to build a program from the source code.ĪPT (Advanced Package Tool) is the command-line tool to interact with this packaging system. There are already dpkg commands to manage it, but apt is a more user-friendly way to handle packages. A packaging system is a way to provide programs and applications for installation. You can print it or save it for offline viewing. Download apt-get command cheatsheet for future reference.

Ubuntu yum