Aptitude is a tool that helps us to Install / Delete / Purge / Search programs that we have installed in Debian and derivatives. Its use is very simple, take for example MC:
To install we type the following:
sudo aptitude install mc
to uninstall:
sudo aptitude remove mc
to display information about a program:
sudo aptitude show mc
and to search:
sudo aptitude search mc
So far so good, but there is a more advanced way to search with Aptitude.
aptitude search '~N' edit
It would list all the "new" packages and all those packages whose name contains "edit"
aptitude search ~dtwitter
It would look for which package contains the word Twitter in its description.
aptitude search ^libre
It would search for all packages that start with the word free
aptitude search libre$
It would search for all packages that end with the word free
aptitude search '~dpro !~n^lib'
List all those packages whose description contains the word pros but whose name does not start with lib.
The search patterns are as follows:
~dtwitter
Find all the packages that Twitter has in its description, as we saw above.
~ntwitter
Find all packages that Twitter has in its name.
~Ptwitter
Find all packages that contain twitter in their name or that provide twitter.
~U
Look for any installed packages that can be updated.
man aptitude
Nice. I had never tried some of these advanced variants, now thanks to you I will have a new toy to decorate .. ahem experiment with my Linux, hehehe.
Too bad I do not use any derivative of debian but I use Archlinux ... at least the search for packages in arch I do it with a program called pkgbrowser I think it is only the database of the programs that are in the repos and in the AUR 0.0
Another parameter for the collection: aptitude search ~ i search installed packages.
Example:
aptitude search ~ixorg
you are missing something necessary for cleaning the system
aptitude purge ~ c
Deluxe!.
Here is a tip also for some in case it is useful:
http://mundillolinux.blogspot.com/2013/05/aprendiendo-usar-el-gestor-de-paquetes.html
Regards!
Very interesting, with that I can make the most of Debian.
I'm more used to apt-cache search thing to search