Hello all. Did anyone else need to install aptitude on there computer? I installed it on my desktop last night. I haven’t checked my Librem 13v3 laptop yet, if it needs aptitude. I would like to know if you had to as well? Is it not installed because it runs on sid? That’s my guess?
Why did I install it? Is this not the preferred method sudo aptitude dist-upgrade over sudo apt-get dist-upgrade? I just want to be a knowledgeable and competent administrator of my own computers. That way in the future I can give back to our community with the right answers.
I also notice that not all the software gets installed when I use sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade. There often seems to be packages that are held back. Thank you for your help.
I have a Librem 13v3. I never had to install ‘aptitude’ itself.
I use:
sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade
To my memory, the only time I had difficulty updating was with a sailing app I use for navigation that is not in the PureOS repository. It needed curl4 that was not ready in Purism at that time. I have seen others with conflicts.
PureOS is a rolling release. Recently, that has been discussed here.
Hello mateusrm. I believe the command I used was sudo apt-get install aptitude. Once you enter this command you’ll see all the software packages that come with aptitude. Press Y for yes, you do want to download and install on your computer. Press N for No, if you don’t want to install.
@Wayne is correct, in that the commands used for updating the system are sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade, not sudo aptitude. Aptitude is a package meant for interacting with apt, though I don’t have enough history to know why it exists. There’s no harm in having it, but you don’t need it installed to update your system.
Im using sudo aptitude dist-upgrade to upgrade the whole dist not to do day to day updates/upgrades. For that I can do sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade. From what I read the sudo aptitude dist-upgrade is the preferred command over sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. https://www.amazon.com/Ubuntu-Linux-Toolbox-Commands-Debian/dp/1118183525.
Apt and aptitude are both frontends to dpkg, debians package manager. Where aptitude is in my opinion suited fine for stable distributions, apt is more capable keeping moving targets like debian unstable and also testing updated.
I have more ~ 15 years of experience with debian unstable and aptitude is just too ‘smart’ for the job. Apt handles it better. So my suggestion for PureOS is to use ‘apt update && apt full-upgrade’. For the differences between ‘apt upgrade’ and ‘apt full-upgrade’ or ‘apt dist-upgrade’ please refer to ‘man apt’. In short, full-upgrade performs the function of ‘upgrade’, but will also remove installed packages if necessary to upgrade the system as a whole, whereas ‘upgrade’ never removes anything. That is why ‘upgrade’ sometimes leaves stuff uninstalled, as someone in the thread mentioned.
Thank you for your response devil. The only real reason I used aptitude dist upgrade command was because my pure browser was not upgrading. I used apt-get update and apt-get upgrade and all my software was being updated, minus my browser. So that’s why I used it and it worked! Otherwise, my daily updates are apt-get update; apt-get upgrade. Thanks!!
