Stop using APT

[@ChrisTitusTech]

Copy and Paste Guide: christitus.com/stop-using-apt/

[@sb16650]

Hey! Is something like Nobara OS present for ubuntu/debian?

[@sagegeas5198]

Been a while since I have used Apt so I have to ask. Can Apt install Pacman onto Debian, or is it only for Arch?

[@abdallahtarek3602]

Please talks about accessible in Linux World Screen Reader and tools for low vision users

[@RogueRen]

@@sagegeas5198 I think you can, but it's more like;y to break stuff. This Nala thing seems like a better solution

[@nkristianschmidt]

​@Jack Warner had issues too but managed with pacstall

[@vendetta.02]

apt and nala are both frontends for dpkg actually, nala doesnt use apt in the background it's a frontend for dpkg, similar thing but important distinction.

[@v0ldy54]

So can one for example install a package with apt and uninstall it with Nala and vice versa?

[@Machtyn]

Sooo, it's not really "Stop using APT". It's "Start using APT correctly with NALA".

[@ChrisTitusTech]

True, but FOR THE ALGORITHM!

[@randomname2437]

@@ChrisTitusTech algorithm!!!

[@iankester-haney3315]

Apt is a really great system, so is dnf. But then the Linux distros reinvented Dependency Hell. Now there are so many packages and interrelated dependencies that the whole system bogs down.

[@b1zzler]

That’s kind of like saying: “use machine code correctly with C/C++.” The whole point of C/C++ is to avoid needing to work directly with assembly / machine code.

[@master138]

KZbinr moment

[@rancidbeef582]

I use Debian or Debian derivatives BECAUSE they use apt. I've ditched different distros in the past because they kept changing their installers / package managers to something they perceived as "better". Nala does look pretty cool, though. Although if ever get around to automating my updates with Ansible it might be a moot point.

[@Darkk6969]

I do use Ansible to automate the patching on my servers. I may give Nala try on my workstation PC.

[@ioneocla6577]

Which distro are you talking about ? The only distro which have changed it's package manager is redhat with first rpm, yum and then dnf. But debian also changed from dpkg to apt. And other distros like arch gentoo alpine openSUSE or even void never changed package managers

[@rancidbeef582]

@@ioneocla6577 Mostly Redhat and it's derivatives. SuSE changed at some point I believe. I used Mandrake and whatever they renamed themselves to, but I honestly don't remember why I quit using it. I just never liked pacman on Arch. And then there's emerge on Gentoo... that was a total nightmare. I didn't try Debian before apt came along.

[@ChristopherGray00]

That seems like a weird thing to be a dealbreaker for you, i've never thought of package managers as some ultimate reason i would pick a distro, generally i can learn a new package manager very quickly and easily, when i'm working on my VMs i typically use fedora's DNF and arch's pacman, but my host system is ubuntu.

[@FLMKane]

@@ioneocla6577 not really. Dpkg is a lower level program than apt, which acts as a front end to dpkg

[@gimcrack555]

Never had a problem using APT. Everything you said is correct and nala does seem to improve things as you pointed out. Beside APT there was always aptitude. Which is better then apt. I just stuck with apt. But I do like this nala and its progress. Nice job pointing this out and your feed back. It looks like it's a better choice between the two.

[@wayland7150]

I always thought that APT was one of the best things about Debian or at least the principle of it for Linux. Interesting that there is something better.

[@jimmyrichards5595]

I love and have always used aptitude. This nala does indeed sound like it has some nice improvments. Not that it matters for me, as I am now a Garuda Linux user. But interesting stuff nonetheless!

[@moto083c]

I must be a noob. I still use apt but sometimes i prefer Synaptic Package Manager

[@gimcrack555]

@@moto083c Nothing wrong using synaptic. I love synaptic and that's actually the best way to install and uninstall things. synaptic offer many things. Snapshot of the app and the developer webpage and even location and dependencies.

[@JensVanBroeckhoven]

​@@wayland7150 Well yes. APT is a set of tools and libraries for dpkg supporting dpkg-deb (the actual package manager) using various front-ends like apt, apt-get, aptitude, synaptic, ... and now also nala.

[@Earl.Norris]

Never knew there was a problem with APT. But this seems cool. I wonder if this would catch the attention of apt developers to maybe in the next version to take some of these ideas and incorporate them. Sometimes things need to be demonstrated so I can understand the problem that people are having. Well done to Nala team. Team Apt what is the response and action.

[@ChristopherGray00]

The problem with apt is they haven't updated their frontend or added things like delta updates, parallel downloading, etc that other package managers have.

[@buddyreg234]

Can I filter packages if do not want to download them with nala?

[@alphanet72]

Actually, the problem is that the Debian echosystem was quite perfectly designed at the beginning, where other distributions took ages to get seemless upgrades, configuration management, diversions. I don't even know if they even have diversions for example. Now, however, the world is changing where people won't upgrade a system for 20 years (like I did), but are reinstalling every day or so Docker containers. In that context, apt is slow and you don't need configuration management, nor diversions, nor seemless upgrades. So, Nala is good news anyway.

[@javaman2883]

@@ChristopherGray00 Delta updates have not been more efficient for some time. They were great back in the days of dial up internet. But with high speed internet, the time you gain by downloading deltas rather than full packages is lost with the time it takes to apply the deltas compared to replacing whole files. The parallel downloading is an effective speedup.

[@ibazulic]

@@ChristopherGray00 From my testing, on the same machine, with the same 1.5 Gbps connection, installing Fedora/RHEL packages with yum/dnf/whatever is usually *slower* than using apt, even though yum/dnf/whatever has all those great things enabled such as delta updates and parallel downloading.Generally speaking, the speed argument to me is kinda the worst one because differences today are measured in seconds, which is completely inconsequential. Upgrades of packages on production machines are rarely done anyway and they are planned so you usually don't care about how long the download lasts, you want the thing to go through without issues. On desktops, most modern apt based distributions (including Debian) have apt running in a background as sort of a cron job, constantly downloading packages and upgrading them as well, if that is allowed. The only other scenario is when you want to install something new, and then we get back to my previous point of complaining about a time difference measured in seconds (if the difference actually exists).

[@BogdanSerban]

I actually find APT to be the second fastest package manager after pacman. I don't know why you find it slow. And given its history I think it's the most robust, I never had any issues with it (can't say the same about pacman).

[@ioneocla6577]

The issues are with arch's bleeding edge nature. Not Pacman itself

[@paulie-g]

@@ioneocla6577 I've had far fewer issues with arch than with debian-based distros. Installing something that requires recent versions of libraries on debian is a massive pain and clobbered my install several times. Granted, this was many years ago, maybe they've got some sort of solution for that now, but I no longer care. Arch rarely causes problems and never causes insoluble problems provided you have sufficient clue. I mean I don't actually recall a problem that either arch or pacman caused me, and it's been years now. From time to time I have to get around some dependency cycles with aur packages, which takes not long at all unless the upstream isn't well-maintained or developed on old crud like debian and won't compile with, say, new gcc. Then it takes a bit longer if I care (and gets those projects patches) or 0 if I don't and remove them. Maybe I would care if I were running on a potato and didn't want to compile (ie SBCs), but there's plenty of -bin packages available for heavy things and I don't have to deal with repo hell to use them. The fact that there's more than likely a pkgbuild in aur for something you want to install that you can edit from if you want a custom build ensures that pretty much everything I've got on my system is properly package-managed. Back in the days of using debian on desktop and RHEL on servers I had no end of issues with that. I can see people who can't evaluate if recent kernel changes might break something for them possibly having an issue (I haven't personally), but that's what -lts versions are for if that's your thing. It used to be part of my job to package our kernel and several userspace packages with rpm in the good old linux-2.4 days (primarily because no one could - or pretended they couldn't - figure out how to package my cluster/failover stuff correctly so it'd start in a known and expected condition) for an appliance product. I remember searing pain. Thankfully, that's all I remember and all I have to remember. Thank you Arch.

[@paulie-g]

This 'robust' system clobbered a rather straightforward dist upgrade. This was in the late 00's I think. All I had was X11, windowmake, and a full dev environment for kernel dev on console. Boom, completely clobbered. If I wanted to use an OS where a re-install is easier than a fix, I had plenty of better options.

[@nightwintertooth9502]

Just be thankful that you're not emerging the @world and dealing with circular dependency holes and use flags to wait a day on a browser to compile in a source based distro. It gets far worse than apt or pacman. Though I must say we are overdue an apt upgrade. yum got dnf in the server distro world which helped out a lot with some of the problems caused by apache pear modules and production backend software like whm got even more reliable with the switch to dnf. Dnf helped where it mattered in the server world so I hope to see more apt solutions even if it's just a wrapper for now.

[@tonyantony8748]

xbps is super fast too, probably faster than pacman

[@soppaism]

In debian stable updates tend to be so small it doesn't really matter how you make them. But I suppose this is useful if you expirement a lot with packages (or run testing/sid).

[@keylanoslokj1806]

Xubuntu supports this?

[@arthurmoore9488]

The problem I run into is that Debian release cadence is so slow that I can't do what I want to do with the software. Mostly because the functionality either doesn't exist, relies on a library which is too new, or all the guides are for a version that's only 2 years old, while Stable's version is 4 years old. It also sucks when doing an upgrade since the likelihood of major broken changes is much greater. Really, I would rather Debian name stable "LTS" and have a 6-12 month release of testing.

[@DennisGentry]

Or you install fresh systems fairly often

[@Alias_Anybody]

As long as it silently runs in the background doing its thing WITHOUT either interrupting me directly with prompts or indirectly by using 50% CPU power or some nonsense I honestly don't care if a package installer/updater is pretty or lightning fast. I mean, who stares at their update process? Doesn't matter if we are talking Linux, Windows or Mac OS either. Apart from that, naked apt still gives more information that many graphical installers anyway.

[@Perry....]

Ok? then bye. Lmao

[@spicynoodle7419]

Damn, now I miss Windows 10 updates. I wish my Arch had those...

[@Alias_Anybody]

@@spicynoodle7419 I always assumed Arch users need to be literate.

[@spicynoodle7419]

@@Alias_Anybody I'm literate in shitposting :^)

[@AlNexus]

I HATE Linux and the way it handles stuff! With Windows my CPU was constantly having 100% usage and system freezes, but after installing Linux it's always sitting at ~1%! Because of Linux my CPU has become lazy and it's almost always not doing anything!!!!

[@khelben1979]

As a long time Debian user I think you're wrong on this one. Of course you can use any tools you want, what ever makes you happy! ;) But if you're trying to reach out to a broader base of people, down voting on a stable and robust system such as apt, just tells me you haven't been using Linux long enough, yet. I've been following you for a couple of years, and I know you used to be very pro Microsoft Windows guy, and although it's good you see the positive things with Linux these days, consider it still takes lots of time to really learn to get used to a completely new system, such as Linux. I've been using Debian since the 90's, and everything is far from perfect with Debian for sure, but if you're rushing to use more modern tools, you have to think about the future of these tools. Apt has been around for a long time, and I hope Debian continues to support that. Anyone who's unhappy with the choices Debian makes, just switch to another Linux distribution, and that should solve it for you.

[@MR-vj8dn]

I like what you’re writing here and agree.

[@TheMaevian]

This, I don’t get how you can have anything against apt. It’s probably one of the nicest systems ever. I still use apt in combination with flatpack as I like to keep most on stable but still have an up to date and sandboxed browser

[@JassonCordones]

I don't see the point of this comment

[@JensAndree]

Hear hear! I started using Debian in -96 I think, coming from many years running SunOS, NonStop and BSD and I think I giggled the first time I used apt-get because how simple and informative it was! I mean just download everything from available mirrors? Updates? Searching with apt-cache was just the icing on the cake and it's been taking care of all my installs and updates ever since. I don't mind scripts that provides better information - or present the information better, but in the end of the day it's all just lipstick on a pig and no front end script will make things faster since it's running the same operations in the background... I do love things like htop instead of top since it provides better and more data so even us old dogs like eye candy IF it does things better, but usually I prefer the simpler route and after 30+ years running UNIX/Linux one of the few things that didn't need improvement is the apt interface to dpkg. It just works!

[@MrJosch700]

​​@@JensAndree I see your htop and raise you btop since bookworm I think in stable and it's pretty neat I have to say. But I agree fully that you don't have to have the shiniest new thing. Never thought apt has a problem.

[@DoubleRainbowXT]

i hate people who say STOP USING THIS OR THAT with no goddamn reason. IT WORKS, PERFECTLY.

[@_VeritasVosLiberabit_]

Maybe "hate" is a strong word for this, but I understand what you say.

[@misatzu]

@@_VeritasVosLiberabit_ considering how "hate" is (mis)used for anything barely resembling dislike or even just critique these days, in reality it's not that of a strong word anymore ... but I understand what you say a.k.a. this doesn't mean I like or defend this trend :] just being real.

[@MohammedMehdiTBER]

My most used command in linux: apt update -y && apt full-upgrade -y && apt autoremove -y && apt clean && flatpak upgrade && snap update

[@MohammedMehdiTBER]

@@igorfoxly2555 👍

[@perkelix]

upgrade-system

[@MohammedMehdiTBER]

@@perkelix I didn't know about this command! Does it make something special than the others?

[@personalgao]

You're a life saver! Really this helps a lot when "trying" some packages and apps. So clear to see and undo the whole thing. Thank you. This videos are great Chris! GG

[@sysandy2]

What a great little wrapper. As someone who mostly uses Red Hat professionally, the output of Nala looks so much like dnf. One of my complaints about Debian based systems was how convoluted the output from Apt is compared to yum/dnf and even Pacman on Arch. Thanks for putting the spotlight on this nifty little tool. I will definitely have to check it out.

[@f9palas12]

After finding this contribution, I became curious about NALA and decided to give it a try on Debian 11. The results were anything else as encouraging. None of the offered installation procedures (apt, git source) managed to deliver a working version of NALA on a Debian 11 (and I'm not precisely a newbie using Debian). For those of you out there that could face some problems getting NALA to run on their Debian 11 systems, I would recommend "wajig" as a real option. Wajig is certainly less colorful, but at least as powerful in the role of a better apt-dpkg-aptitude frontend as NALA seems to be, with the additional advantage of having a really smooth experience when installing the software.

[@LinuxAvali]

I clicked on the video expecting you to say "Use Snap". I'm so glad that's not what you said. Nala looks great! Gonna give it a shot

[@thespikecanada3236]

apt is much faster than fedora's dnf, has a better search and is less complicated than archs options. I really like it.

[@mirage809]

Nala is looking really good. Really brings good ol' APT up to speed with more modern package managers. You make the DNF comparison and how Nala is doing some things even better than DNF does. You'd probably be happy to hear that the Fedora team are working on a faster and even slicker version of DNF that they're planning to introduce a few versions from now.

[@chrismcdonaldracing]

In RHEL 9 all the last use cases for yum have been perged. If you use yum now in RHEL 9 it's just a symbolic link to dnf. So DNF is good enough for enterprise I'm sure it's going to get even better

[@ioneocla6577]

I Hope. After trying Pacman (arch) or xbps(void) dnf and apt are just soooooo slow

[@AJ-po6up]

When is apt going to be replaced or modernized, that's the real question. It really needs a revamp.

[@DMSBrian24]

@@ioneocla6577 not just slow, also confusing tbh

[@whythosenames]

@@chrismcdonaldracingrhel 8 also has dnf, rhel 7 has yum

Debian packaging system was one of the main reason why I switched from Redhat to Debian (testing) and later to other Debian "clones". I must admit, nala is kinda nice though. :-)

[@justincatterall9597]

Be familiar with apt, it's the one thing you *know* will be on any Debian based system. If you don't learn apt, you're going to hinder yourself on any system that doesn't have your favourite front-end installed; if apt *is* your front end you're good on *any* Debian.

[@thetechq]

When I started using Linux, dependencies were manual. You found a missing dependency and you either had to compile it or find an RPM for it. Some people who like apt did have another solution, manually retrieving dependencies. This tool looks fine, but I don't get the hating on apt. It's a fine tool that has a few shortcomings.

[@ChristopherGray00]

That sounds like hell on earth not gonna lie, i'm happy that modern package managers have evolved so far from that.

[@FLMKane]

@@ChristopherGray00 or it could be like appimages where every software comes with every dependency

[@masskiller9206]

@@ChristopherGray00 it was lol

[@xmurisfurderx]

a complete lack of understanding of what the actual problems are that apt was intended to solve everything has always "just worked"

[@MegaEyeTV]

I just stopped using APT because of this video. You are the man, thanks!

[@davidwayne9982]

THANK YOU for this video--- I LOVE this.... I have eye issues-- had 5 surgeries already and THIS is much easier on my eyes.. not to mention works better... THANKS AGAIN.

[@nefariousintent]

I was downloading from a server in china with 50 kbps. I needed this so much. You're a life saver!

[@joshferguson4660]

Thank you for this suggestion! Separating actions by category for clarity, fetching the fastest mirrors, parallel downloads, history, and undoing changes. Not to mention it looks great, this will be a must-install for me moving forward.

[@Damisj]

...and to speed things up even further, stop using right click for copy and paste in terminal. Use ctrl-shift-X/C/V and it works in almost any terminal =)

[@Christian-of1tz]

It looks nice, but as someone who's using Linux mainly on servers, there is apt pre-installed. Installing another package manager does not really makes sense in that case. (The same goes for vim or NeoVim, when there's only vi pre-installed.)

[@visitor404]

If we keep evolving like this, we're going to create GUIs!

[@markh.6687]

"If God wanted man to have GUIs, He would have given us Xerox PARC!" Commodore Magic Desk and GEOS enter the chat...Hi guys and gals! Let's talk about the REAL first GUI!

[@CU.SpaceCowboy]

also ALL apt history is logged to /var/log/apt/history.log and dpkg to /var/log/dpkg.log. seriously, learn what your talking about before telling new users what to do

[@Requiem100500]

"stop using apt" *proceeds to use apt*

[@zrajm]

There was a bit of complaining about APT at the beginning of the video, but a certain dearth of examples? I would've loved to hear some specific examples of where APT performs badly. Awright: Early comment. I take it back. This video quite nicely illustrates several benefits of nala over the `apt` command. Might even get me to switch from `aptitude` to nala. (Though, I must say, running `aptitude install nala` in the background caused my machine [an old MacBook Air from 2014] to use swap enough to pause the video for half a minute or so - arguably it was APT/Aptitude's fault, but Nala apparently required 54 packages to be installed, 32 of which were Python modules. Not exactly lightweight.)

[@vivanecrosis]

I mostly just been using apt for update and then upgrade 💁🏼 You smashed it. That Nala looks lovely. I shall be installing her soon as! Will also give kitty a try. My Linux is a Lumuntu with 2GB ram, will be nice to see how she behaves with it.

[@nrg753]

That looks way better than APT! My favourite so far is probably APK from Alpine Linux.. far out that is fast

[@ioneocla6577]

Apk is as fast as light but alpine itself isn't really usable as an everyday OS

[@hannes4939]

I agree. I like Pop‘s impementation and workflow but am not a fan of apt. I personally enjoy Void‘s xbps and Gentoo‘s emerge the most

[@SqueezyTheOrca]

I mostly just use "sudo apt full-upgrade" all the time on debian because switching to a different package manager is kinda weird imo except fedora when dnf gets involved.

[@ElectricMind-mq3pe]

This is great! The visual clutter on some terminal's output is ridiculous: no-one can read the output without putting in a huge effort to focus. This makes it easier!!

[@RedBearAK]

I like Nala but the mirrors it gives me based on a simple speed test tend to be pretty flaky, so I haven’t seen much benefit from trying to optimize the mirrors. I wish Nala would do a more extensive test for mirrors that return any 404 errors for actual package downloads. But the UI is a great improvement over APT.

[@gabitoqbito]

Nice review! Thank you for introducing us to Nala, it does look & feel superior! Although the main point for most of us is that since apt ain't broke , don't fix it. In the sense that most of us just use it once in a while and it takes only some seconds to install/update/upgrade packages. I would argue that the problem Nala does solve is the package history/undo upgrade feature, which to me is mind blowing that apt does not implement it at this point

[@davidtuomi8361]

Been a long time Debian fan, I don't know how it is I missed nala. Thank you for raising awareness of this project by creating this video about it. It's a wonderful addition to the apt tools.

[@charliegalliher]

Looks interesting... BTW:what third party plugins does "apt" require?

[@NebRadojkovic]

I am 64 and I want to thank you. Since I started watching all of your videos - I learnt so, so much. Cheers!

[@medeirosdez]

You asked us to let you know what our thoughts are after watching the video, so here are mine. When you said you’re considering switching to a Debian based distro just to use the frontend in question, I thought: is constantly updating and installing stuff most of what he does on his system? Because unless that is so, there’s no sense in going through the hassle of switching… You said it yourself that we should stop distro hoping and start thinking of desktop environments, not distros. Now, if you do so, unless it’s just for fun, then I would be concerned over how much trouble you put yourself into instead of just using your system. I used to be of the kind that spends most of their time setting up their system over and over again until I realized I was totally wasting my precious time preparing systems I would never actually use. Less maintenance, more actual, pragmatic, useful, real, productive use of the system. Anyway, you know better how you spend the limited time on Earth you have been given. Best wishes! ☺️

[@bendergamer14]

7:25 Me for a moment: "How could Linus not know what he is doing?" Me after some seconds: "Oh, he meant the epic gamer one..."

[@gottod6895]

Me too, the man created git, this is child play for him, I was also wondering what does he do with steam then you reminded me.

[@MostafaAhmedAhmed81]

This is mind blowing, especially for the undo feature. I always run into the situation when an install does not go well and I want to clean and start over. It was a headache.

[@RandyHanley]

Whenever I land on my new favorite "daily driver" Linux Distribution, Chris comes up with content to help me make it run even better. Thank you, Chris!

[@rsadix1]

Whenever I land on my new favorite 'daily driver' Linux Distro, CTT comes up with content to make me think I just chose the wrong Distro! Arch, no wait Fedora, no wait Debian! Thanks Chris!

[@RandyHanley]

@@rsadix1 hahah valid point!

[@cabelodomato]

I confess clicked on the link mostly with the intention to bash it in the comments. But after watching the video, I am converted. Well done to teach me what I didn't know that I didn't know.

[@classiquai]

Well, the garbage spinning off my screen is what makes me cool Infront of my friends. I always do an apt upgrade casually when I'm talking to them.

[@misatzu]

lmfao

[@brunekxxx91]

LMFAOOO

[@tomwimmenhove4652]

I never thought about how apt is old. I remember starting with RedHat 5.2, when rpm fucking *sucked*. It was such a breath of fresh air when switching to Debian. You made me realize that this was.... 25, or so, years ago and I'm an old man now. Thanks :)

[@x0rn312]

I've never had any of these problems with apt It has always served me well

[@nir8924]

this vid is just driven by hate to apt (as he clearly said at 3:30)

[@pstewart5443]

I'm convinced it's a much better option. Being a Red Hat Enterprise admin in a previous life we always used yum or a package deployment server to deploy packages. In my opinion this is better than yum. This is the kind of knowledge I'd have taken to begin switching out some of the RHEL servers for Debian. Really cool interface and I like how it only removes what was installed. That level of detail is precisely what an admin needs to perform a QA on a software pkg for STIG, and would make reporting to CISA much easier.

[@FLMKane]

As a fan of apt over yum... I think pacman is the best

[@QuotePilgrim]

The thing with apt purging basically everything is that it is, from my experience, a common occurrence. Something similar to what happened to Linus in his Linux challenge happened to me at least half a dozen times in a period of a couple years. I was trying a few different Ubuntu/Debian based distros, and every once in a while I would try to uninstall a package I didn't need, or upgrade the system, and next thing I know I'm dropped to a TTY because it nuked the whole DE or something. APT is the only package manager where these things ever happen to me. Granted, the only other package manager I've used extensively is pacman, but I've used a few other ones to a lesser extent. Currently I'm on Fedora, so using dnf, of course.

[@chrismcdonaldracing]

I been on fedora since core days in early 2000s to the best of my knowledge I had yum 9nce purge my system years and years ago from a bug that was fixed pretty quick. DNF has been rock solid

[@QuotePilgrim]

@@chrismcdonaldracing The one gripe I have with dnf is that "dnf search" doesn't tell you which of the packages it finds are already installed. Other than that it's great.

[@DMSBrian24]

@@QuotePilgrim this, so annoying, but you can always check dnf list

[@Gurj101]

@@QuotePilgrim really it doesn't? I have never used it but there should be some -option that can be used to filter them out no? If it really doesn't then check if it has the ability to view all installed packages and write a script to filter those out from the search maybe idk really inefficient but that's what i can think off the top of my head.

[@QuotePilgrim]

@@Gurj101 listing all installed packages is possible, of course (dnf list installed), but the list of results "dnf search" gives you won't tell if any of the packages it finds is already installed, and there's no option to make it do so. All I've found was other people complaining about this behavior, and apparently there's a many years old request for that feature that the devs set to low priority.

[@sellomohapi]

Apt upgraded, thanks Chris, been wondering where to get better package manager, you are a life saver.

[@stagdragon3978]

man... I really need to follow this guy. he's just a treasure trove of information. Not only enjoying Nala making things easier but I never heard of Kitty until now.

[@lastinline1958]

I'm sold! This is revolutionary. Thanks for all of your useful info.

[@NatesRandomVideo]

aptitude fixed this decades ago.

[@danr2513]

OMG Chris!!! I’ve been using apt forever and never thought about another package manager. I love this. Thank you for the video!!

[@dameanvil]

00:00 📦 Apt, commonly used in Debian-based systems, is criticized for being slow, lacking history, and reliant on third-party plugins. 01:08 🔄 Nala serves as a front-end for apt, resolving issues like slow downloads, selecting the best mirrors, maintaining a history with undo capabilities, and enhancing the installation interface. 02:30 🛠 Installing Nala involves adding the mirror and using simple commands based on your Debian version; it significantly improves the apt experience. 03:12 📈 Compared to apt, Nala's upgrade process offers clearer summaries, faster downloads, and a more user-friendly interface within the terminal. 05:01 ⏳ Nala's download interface within the terminal offers accurate time estimations, download progress, and speed details, making package installation more user-friendly. 06:14 🧹 Nala's history feature allows users to track alterations, perform undos for specific actions, and manage installations or removals efficiently. 08:00 🌐 Nala's 'fetch' feature tests and selects the fastest Debian mirrors, significantly speeding up downloads and enhancing the overall Debian experience.

[@hotzeplotz2345]

Thank you, this comment saved me 10 minutes. Every video should have this.

[@TerrisLeonis]

Thank you for the summary!

[@__username__]

If apt slows your down, try to check updates in Windows :) I dunno what kind of evil magic MS porgrammers used to made this beast, but this creature really slow. Comparing with wndows updater apt is blazing fast.

[@rwoliver2]

Nala is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Apt has some issues but it's faster than yum/dnf and one more layer of abstraction to worry about. IMO, the time spent developing Nala could have been using to solve a few Apt bugs.

[@warthunder1969]

Nala is such a great tool, so glad you did a video on this

[@zinsy23]

I've never seen anything like this before! Thanks for sharing. I will give this a try on my Debian Titus setup. While you're at it Chris, I think this would be a good time to demonstrate setting up a local mirror for Debian for an upcoming video. I know it was shown on a live-stream, but it would be so cool to see a concise tutorial.

[@jellifygirl]

As an XFCE user running Debian through Termux X11, with 6-8GB free at any time (functionally more like 1-4. don't ask how.), doing this would spell disaster. You mean, I have to install all this, so I can install even more things slightly more conveniently?!?!?! No way! (really, no way!) This video is a solemn reminder to me that other linux users really do have PCs with PC-sized storage space, and that some of those people get to have so many big chonky packages installed that update and upgrade take longer than 30 seconds... Like, you guys have access to LAN and it's still an issue... that's crazy... I'm kind of amazed.

[@kevinpaulus4483]

Is this chonky ? It looks like an ncurses front-end offcourse it uses python so you're probably right ? Also the memory issue ... is it related to not knowing or the common misunderstandings of how linux handles memory and swap eg ... the vm.overcommit_memory/vm.swappiness sysctl settings?

[@theodoros_1234]

Hey Chris, can you do a video on fixing locale problems? I keep messing it up on my system, and it causes some terminal apps (apt mostly) to complain about failing to set the locale.

[@wayland7150]

If you don't get that right when you install it's very difficult to fix it later. I used a ready made VM from Source Forge, bloody thing was set to Germany making it very hard to type. I got it sorted eventually but it was hit and miss and I did so many things I don't know what fixed it.

[@theodoros_1234]

@@wayland7150 In my case, it's Kubunttu install. Everything was fine on install, it was when I changed some lauguage and regional settings on Plasma (date/currency display) that things went wrong.

[@wayland7150]

@@theodoros_1234 Yeah, if it goes wrong it's really hard to correct manually. Unfortunately there are a number of things in Linux that work fine out of the box but if you break it or your pet walks over your keyboard can be very hard to fix.

[@re.liable]

I'm sold. Thanks for the showcase!

[@jeremyferguson6335]

Great find, Chris; Nala really does make a huge difference. Thank you.

[@andrewyek]

Chris, Pls do a video on HOW to NOT let system upgrade changes my DE UI or system setting on linux. I thought only manjaro KDE changes my UI without approval.. NEVER expect Debian KDE testing ALSO changes my UI without approval after system upgrade!! that piss me off.

[@basharabdelkarim9548]

You may had a bad experience with APT in the past, but it was my first package manager into Linux... and the reason why I've started using Linux by then.. was because of my Slow Computer... I think you're doing APT injustice the same way people did against Windows Vista, not realizing that their PC was actually Slow. Loved your content though, keep up the great work !

[@LautaroQ2812]

Chris has a pretty killer and modern machine. I mean, truly new, with a 5 series Ryzen (not Ryzen 5, but 5000 series). Saying he's doing an "injustice" pointing out the bad things of something that is old because it's what you used first, is silly and totally subjective. For that matter, everyone should say everything else other than Windows 95 is bad. Which would be silly too, wouldn't it.

[@basharabdelkarim9548]

@@LautaroQ2812 Wouldn't disagree with you, but for me the average user, APT is enough... I want to use Debian as light as possible, no need for an additional package manager (including Snapd)... and I don't mind waiting the extra (30sec)... At the end of the day, I'm just an average home user... not running a mission critical software center; that needs every possible calculated second, and if I were I wouldn't be running Debian-based systems in the first place!

[@SlCKB0Y-sb1kg]

No, no, Vista was a steaming pile of shit. Why do you think 7 came along so quickly?

[@gerowen]

This is actually pretty awesome. I thought I would let you know that I checked and unless there's some feature or bug fix you must have in the latest version, nala is actually in the default repositories for Debian, so you don't have to add a third party repo to get it. 🙂

[@roerd]

Yes, I checked this too. It is in official Debian repos for bookworm (stable) and newer releases, though the 3rd-party-repo might still be useful for older releases like bullseye (oldstable). It is also in the official Ubuntu repos: regularly since lunar (23.04), but also for the current LTS release 22.04 via the jammy-backports repo.

[@esra_erimez]

This video suits my needs rather well. Thank you for the information regarding this important topic. Your work into these efforts is good.

[@Whiskey_Wisdom]

1:50 - so lets install an application using apt. OK, that install went perfectly fine, now let's uninstall it. OK, that uninstall went perfectly fine. Now, let me show you how to fix this problem. Ummmm... what?

[@Rickety3263]

What are you updating that takes “hours” on a regular basis?!?!

[@StraussBR]

Windows users will never know the joy of finding a nice pice of free OOS software we can add to our personal repo

[@reiniermoreno1653]

Equivalent for windows is freeware and repo is /Downloads and the package is .exe installer

[@herlegz6969]

Been using nala for years, yet still get resistance and push back from brogrammers, as if better depends on who presents it.

[@distant6606]

Pacman's the best. Stupidly simple (kiss), blazingly fast(rustacians rewrite it in rust lmao!!!!), and it doesn't get in your way.(I use arch btw :))

[@FBHSswimmer2006]

Stupidly simple, except for the fact that the syntax doesn't make sense. Like sudo pacman -s kitty. Why is the syntax a '-s' to install a program?

[@MaderHaker]

@@FBHSswimmer2006 sync kitty to what is present on the repository

[@NorthernChimp]

@@FBHSswimmer2006 Isn't it faster written than sudo apt-get install juvenile hart-melting carnivorous mammal?

[@distant6606]

@@FBHSswimmer2006 s stands for sync. instead of typing 10 letters for an action you type `1

[@Wandering_Horse]

Gotta admit, that is pretty damn slick! I would even say its better then the 'synaptic' gui package manager. I have to admit, I come from way back in the 90's in the days of dependency hell, so any modern package manager that works without breaking shit is a miracle to me.

[@stokitko]

I'm not that impressed like you. As you mentioned we already have a GUI for apt that's the Synaptic. It generally usable but outdated. Why the nala authors just didn't contributed to it and instead decided to create a TUI? They just spent their and our time

[@googuu99]

Rose and Bruno led me hear😂

[@zyanchuah]

sleep tomorrow but tonight go crazy, all you gotta do is just meet me at the

[@jackpalaro]

OMG Nala is very good. Thank you!

[@nodopamine6243]

It runs like a dream I love you for showing this off.

[@fool-on-the-hill]

Are any of you using a package manager for hours? I haven’t had any issues with apt…

[@Cenot4ph]

Same, parallel downloads would be nice though

[@rhalloff]

New viewer, newer Linux user. Nicely done. I'm digging Nala. Thanks!!

[@markh.6687]

Nice work, Chris. Is there any particular advantage of using Nala over Synaptic, for those who aren't married to CLI anymore?

[@RodrigoGraca31]

apt works perfectly. nala has some very sus dependencies. also added multiple extra repos to my machine without my permission. once again sus.

[@LukeArp]

Well, I guess I was under a rock the last year. Just setup Nala on my home server. Updates so much faster now. Thanks

[@tomstevens2854]

I try to avoid adding unofficial repositories to my Linux installation. If this becomes part of a distro's official software I'd definitely check it out.

[@volitank2156]

Wow great video, Nala looks useful. The lead developer seems very smart and handsome.

[@harsanj6281]

wish i had found this channl sooner. wonderful stuff and wonderful personality..... love and respect from Iran.

[@johnjbateman]

Dude! I have been away for a while, just watched this. Love your office vibe, and the beardy gray! ThisIs40

[@Tr9staN]

Great vid ... I installed immediately and started using :)

[@sunnyheheheh9401]

Can you review the bedrock Linux meta distro, i am really curious about your point of view on this thing

[@hooflung128]

Between this and using a rolling firmware based Debian you have shown me the light!

[@GuntarFeldmann]

Großartiges Werkzeug. Ich denke, daß ich nala auch bald mal probieren werde! Danke für die Inspiration. Und besten Dank auch für die Textbausteine zur Installation auf der Homepage!

[@darkwolf41nite53]

If that’s the case can we remove apt an use NALA ??

[@tadmikowsky7520]

Sweet, thanks for the tip man! Ive mostly used Fedora/centos/redhat, just started dealing with some Debian-based systems recently and mind was boggled that apt has no history command like yum/dnf.

[@MyReviews_karkan]

Oh man, I was just talking to its developer on reddit. He's an awesome dude and very smart. I'm definitely using this. Thanks for giving it more publicity

[@darkwolf41nite53]

So instead of useing apt install NALA? On our Linux operating systems?

[@wildmanjeff42]

Very interesting. Will definitely try out-- Thanks for the video Chris !

[@giomjava]

WOW that nala looks actually WAY better and how I'd expect modern console application to look 😯 just great 👌

[@gamereditor59ner22]

Thank you!! I have options when updating and upgrading!!

[@darthcabs]

You don't need to trash apt just to highlight the features of nala

[@Esteban7GT]

Thank you! I’ve been looking for something like this!!!!

[@lua-nya]

I don't remember within the last 10 years having the problems with APT you mention. Now, before 2010? Did indeed have issues. Will give this nala a try though, looks prettier.