Changing apt-get

Changing apt-get

Today’s GnomeTWEAK is a quick one, designed to help you keep your new Debian system as up to date as possible.

As I noted yesterday, one of the great strengths of Debian is apt-get, the program designed to allow easy Internet-based updates of your system. These updates can be system-wide or on a program by program basis. apt-get also downloads and installs new programs on your system on demand, provided they exist in a Deb server.

For execution, apt-get relies on the /etc/apt/sources.list file. This file is easily modified by the root user to add or remove sources from which to pull your updates or programs. This file follows a specific format. A typical line in the /etc/apt/sources.list file will look like this:

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free

This line does several things. First, it executes the deb command. Second, it points the deb command to the main US Debian apt server. Finally, it indicates the types of packages the user will update from the server - stable, main, contrib, and non-free.

Modifying this file allows you great flexibility, checking several sources for several different types of packages. You’ll find an “unofficial” list of apt sources here. These can easily be added to your /etc/apt/sources.list file as root using your favorite text editor.

If you prefer to modify this file via a somewhat prettier interface, you can choose the apt-setup program. In effect, this mimics the process of setting up your apt sources during the initial install. It’s text based and very easy to use. If you’ve already customized your apt sources list, apt-setup appends the current list rather that rewriting the existing one.

If you’re using the Gnome desktop environment, you may already have a full GUI apt updater in gnome-apt. This program actually rolls the features of apt-get into a package manager. By alphabetically listing packages available from your apt sources list, gnome-apt allows you to choose, update and install new packages in a few simple mouseclicks or keystrokes.

apt-get is easy to use and, as you now know, very easy to configure and customize. It really is one of the things that makes Debian shine.