Nala is a New Package Manager for Debian and Ubuntu

[@gnarlin4964]

Nala also has one extremely important feature that apt doesn't: READABILITY

[@s4u5g5]

what do you need to read? Package names? Please...

[@Ghfvhvfg]

Yep all other pakagemanagers have the feature allready

[@hopelessdecoy]

I agree, better info displays are better. The people who want to use apt fine but to not understand why this is better/important should only use vi and no other text editor or design programs as they all just display info. Spreadsheets and slide shows are just bloated text docs right?

[@phaedrus2633]

Your presentation has a great pace. Not too fast, not too wordy, just great. Thank you.

[@bjorn7696]

I believe Nala also has a history and rollback system.

[@mpsii]

This is a very good feature. nala history and nala history undo allows you to see your nala sessions and rollback what you have decided are packages you did not want

[@volitank2156]

Note that the history's undo and redo are only applicable for `install` and `remove`. Upgrades are not able to be rolled back atm as it is quite a tricky system to get correct. A big blocker is if the packages are no longer in the repos, it would not be trivial to downgrade them. Eventually I do plan on supporting this in some fashion in the future. Right now there is a ton to do and not really sitting as a priority. Additionally the history file's format needs a rework before more complicated operations can be performed.

[@hopelessdecoy]

​@@volitank2156good on you, thanks for your work so far

[@Anonymous4045]

I love little stuff like this. It doesn't really do much (aside from parallel installs) but just looks really cool. I wanna use it, and I don't even use debian lol

[@comradeishaan89604]

arent you on the python discord server?

[@Anonymous4045]

@@comradeishaan89604 indeed

[@GiveAcademy]

My favorite part of nana is the history and ability to roll back to a specific point.

[@bondjovi4595]

Back in my day, we resolved dependencies by hand.

[@swapnilkanyal]

As a Debian user and Pop os fan l must check out Nala for sure!

[@mysteriousboozebunny6534]

I only learned about Nala last week. Game changer on Debian based distros if you ask me.

[@John3_16_]

I love nala. Thanks to chris Titus a few weeks ago!

[@cbbcbb6803]

Thanks. Very useful. Nala also fixes much of the annoying terminal output clutter of apt. Everytime I use apt, I have to hope my eyeballs don't shutdown from trying to decipher the screen output.

[@ukyoize]

Nala is straight up in Debian Testing's repo

[@burning_KFC]

As always writing a comment to support the channel

[@attomic5319]

I don't use distros based on Debian, but it's always nice to see projects like these gaining some exposure.

[@13thravenpurple94]

Great work 🥳🥳🥳 Thank you 💜💜💜

[@RD4888]

Thanks very much, this helped me tremendously very clearly

[@dmaberlin]

for example apt knows the reverse dependencies and reads them every time ( that's why it's so slow ) nala does not know reverse dependencies nala does not support working with sources, virtual packages.... what you think about this?

[@Nonas_a_Blerd]

To avoid having to manually add fetched mirrors, run: doas (or sudo) nala fetch --auto --fetches 8 --country US. This will automatically add 8 US-based mirrors to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nala-sources.list Thanks for all you do

[@nightshade427]

Nala fetch will get the closest fastest mirror as well which is super helpful, Nala history is super cool for rolling back things easily, love it

[@Henry-sv3wv]

A proud lioness shouldn't fetch tings like a dog!

[@round1873]

that's not a package manager, it's a frontend for apt.

[@round1873]

@Lan Zadura "Nala is a **New Package Manager** for Debian and Ubuntu" From the title of the video.

[@NECOdes]

@@round1873 10 second in video and he sys it's a front end for APT. Title is just for the algorithm.

[@NECOdes]

have patience my man

[@davidrohan3104]

@@round1873 It's called playing the algorithm for more views.

[@hiru92]

yes he said in begining of video

[@rmcellig]

Is there a pref file to change colors etc....? Excellent video Derek!!!! 🙂

[@robinsourtoe9416]

I use nala now for several weeks an pop os. And it is the best thing since... perhaps neovim ;-)

[@pw1187]

Nala is a lot better than apt, It just a lot more than just bling It's easier to read, parallel downloading... In my opinion apt is the most archaic of all package manager

[@rubell.alfaruk]

nala is a front end for apt , looks may be better but under the hood its apt anyway, yes I give parallel download a plus point.

[@pw1187]

@@rubell.alfaruk no expletive captain obvious... Did I say it was a totally different package manager?

[@tonyf5869]

@@pw1187 if you look at the comments there's a lot of "WeLl, AcKsHuAlLy" going on over this. it's so stupid.

[@philippeheyvaert3742]

This output is very nice. I'm using the dracula theme in gnome terminal... very very nice. Good job developers! Nice video DT, as always.

[@NormanF62]

Its the front end to libapt under Ubuntu Rhino. The package manager is Pacstall. Rhino-init handles updates.

[@SB-qm5wg]

Looks cool.

[@thenextpoetician6328]

Your title is a bit overdone ...but the description, which contradicts it is correct.

[@csehszlovakze]

tbh pacstall looks a lot more interesting than yet another apt frontend (which is already a dpkg frontend)

[@marshalllee2837]

I will try it out soon!

[@Gurj101]

I heard about it in a different video on some other channel and it seems nice. Tbh almost makes me feel guilty to switch to manjaro just because of pacman lol. I hope in the future nala can replace apt in debian as default.

[@s4u5g5]

No, it will not and thank god. Debian is good system because it is simple. Go away with your unneeded abstraction, most of sysadmins don't need it. KEEP IT SIMPLE!

[@raddinox2707]

I'm running Debian Sid but I don't see a reason to install another package manager then the one for the distribution. KDE is managing my updates anyway, and it's not like I'm sitting and watching while it's updating.

[@mattwilliams1844]

I think the most obvious feature request for nala would be to port the pacstrap code into nala

[@adityawagh]

What's pacstrap?

[@exodous02]

Ohh, pretty. I like bling, and parallel downloads will speed things up. should have named it with 3 characters, nala is 3 where apt is 3.

[@Nukelover]

You can get parallel downloads from apt-fast, which also makes the output from apt slightly prettier. If installed, it is also used with Topgrade, which is pretty cool. You then get parallel downloads for apt while upgrading the packages installed by all your other package managers.

[@andrewnorris5415]

nala does that and more

[@Nukelover]

@@andrewnorris5415 I could be missing something, but the Gitlab page doesn't mention flatpak, snap, cargo, etc. It just seems to handle apt (being a frontend for it, of course). Topgrade handles all those other packaging systems, in addition to handling parallel downloading on Debian/Ubuntu through apt-fast. I like the look of Nala though. I may try it.

[@aronwomack359]

All of y'all talking about the clutter of apt, use the -q and it will not show the output. And in your shell rc, alias nala='sudo nala' will save you time from having to type sudo nala or if you forget sudo !! I was using nala, but I ended up going back, because you can set your apt and associated package binaries to parallel and if you know a little, you can get a lot done.

[@OM-bs7of]

The default package manager (apt) is better when it comes to smaller screens as tabular formats will become jumbled on smaller displays

[@atemoc]

80x24 ftw

[@maksimmuruev423]

its also much better then your python upgrade screew up. :)

[@volitank2156]

This is actually something I've come across the last time I did a system install. I'm going to eventually make a switch or something to allow a more apt like output.

[@accountid9681]

or you could just decrease the font size

[@OM-bs7of]

@@accountid9681 you forgot the part about using a magnifying glass

[@anon_y_mousse]

I'm still waiting on a generic package manager that can work as a drop in replacement for all of them on any Linux system. Once someone writes that, I'll be on that like a fly on poop. If one ever crops up, it'll be interesting to see how they solve all the problems with interoperability.

[@jabuxas]

nix

[@randomname2437]

@@jabuxas this.

[@Perry....]

Then you're gonna ride Nix to hell and back. You're living under a rock friend

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@Perry.... I'd not heard of NixOS before now, and it looks weird and not at all like what I'm referring to. I'm talking about something that would integrate with the system like apt or pacman would. Maybe a new set of standards would need to be drafted to enable this, but for what I want, every OS could use it and install packages that way. Even if they still had to maintain separate repositories, they could still use a single program to do the installation. If you understand what I'm saying?

[@SoundToxin]

@@anon_y_mousse Nix can be used outside of NixOS on other distros, as can Guix.

[@darkiceywolf2953]

It makes me wonder is this going to be the new default for Ubuntu. Like how red hat switched from yum to dnf.

[@Nightknight187]

This is really nice for Debian :)

[@YannMetalhead]

Good video.

[@timothyt.82]

this is pretty neat. My only problem is that it doesn't seam to recognize the repos I added myself, and I'm not sure I want to go through and try to re-add them. Maybe later, when I have some more free time on my hands.

[@seths1997]

6:00 I had a commodore flashback - load "file",8,1 😆

[@aonodensetsu]

nala upgrade also runs update first, which apt should do as well

[@ayasolaris4971]

i'm a pleb so I only picked 4 mirrors and now i'm getting a bunch of missing stuff when running nala upgrade.. >.< how do I reset my /apt/sources.list?

[@xp911x8]

Hi, please help me. After I did nala fetch and choose the top 10 I received errors how to restore my old repository settings ?

[@RockawayCCW]

Sparky Linux has nala preinstalled. I didn't know what it was until I saw this video just now.

[@DREDKNOT2063]

can this replace or fix the pop os shop for updating my os an apps also how do i install on pop as my pop shop offen crashs before a finishing a update

[@accountid9681]

I might actually switch back to a debian based distro now. I always hated them, because the apt syntax made it a pain to diagnose update issues.

[@OazadOMER]

Hello and thanks ,you are doing great job, I have a question about Arch this is a first time in last 12 years they didnt release the iso in the first of month , to today its 5 August and still no new iso , I hope everything going well with them , I couldnt find any news about this

[@wildanpratama6608]

You must try Ubuntu rolling Rhino, rolling version of Ubuntu and builtin with nala installed

[@Noxer77]

Hey DT can you do a video about reflector on arch and how to set it up

[@Edrag5364]

I"ve started installing nala first thing whenever I install a distro that uses apt.

[@guilherme5094]

Nice👍

[@yousefkhaled2]

is this a build-in dark mode in Gitlab or an extension?

[@alt2458]

9:39 Those are not dependencies DT What are you looking at when making the videos?

[@kpcraftster6580]

Being based on python rather than c++, is nala significantly slower than apt (the parallel downloading aside)?

[@NoLoginIdea]

Is it me or APT is way faster when you run update? The more mirror I add the longer it takes.

[@alt2458]

So you don't use the terminal shortcuts neither? Going back to the start of the line with the left key.

[@-smokem]

.. still working on the python dependencies that are required but not installable from repos.

[@RD4888]

Do you have any videos ref WARP terminal for Linux

[@sephiroth7818]

Was the (1.. 16) the Enter default? Nala looks similar to DNF

[@volitank2156]

Yes, the range is designed to be the default. Although it's broken right now so I need to fix that lol. I will probably additionally allow commas as a separator and also allow you to specify a range.

[@valentinomelis8331]

Hey dt, can you do a video on signing a Linux distro to use It on a secure boot machine?

[@karolbronk5140]

Is there a nala version for raspberry pi and other arm based computers?

[@mahadevisutar1436]

Looks like the name "Nala" is inspired/adopted from Indian history.

[@Rbourk252]

I love the bling. Give me more

[@jamesmarsh9370]

how do you install this on LM 20.3 cinnamon?

[@max_im_um]

You missed the most important feature that's lacking in apt: History, with the ability to roll back.

[@stp_79]

I wanna ask, is both Nala & Aptitude are frontend for Apt?

[@volitank2156]

Yes. So technically nala, aptitude, apt, and apt-get are all front ends for libapt-pkg.

[@AFGonzaga]

You should also check "nala history", it's like yum/dnf history

[@alenasenie6928]

What? Apt can't do parallel downloads? I was under the impression that should be a basic feature for any package manager this day.

[@s4u5g5]

Aptitude has parallel downloads

[@slavvoslava4694]

There are many package managers imo. Once you hit 3 or 4 , it starts getting annoying remembering the commands for each. It will never happen but a standardized package manager would be nice.

[@Anonymous4045]

I mean for the most part, the main ones are pacman, apt, and rpm. Most of the other ones are built on top of those (eg yay and paru are essentially pacman + aur support, and nala here is apt but with cool colors and grouping)

[@jared.mohammed]

There's snaps and flatpaks which are universal package formats. And appimages, if you want to have a portable version of your application.

[@SoundToxin]

Nix or Guix can handle everything, including emacs packages and vim plugins.

[@aytviewer2421]

FYI: I think "nala" means "gift" in Swahili... Not sure if this was intended (aka gift = package...) in the name or not...

[@volitank2156]

Nala was named after my cat, who was named after Lion King.

[@aytviewer2421]

@@volitank2156 There you go then. Many names and phrases in the Lion King are Swahili. Heck, "simba" literally means "lion", "rafiki" is "friend", and there are many other Swahili words there. You serendipitously chose a name from the Lion King that literally translates to English as "gift" and a package could be received as a gift. I love it when the world aligns like that. Cheers.

[@jamesmarsh9370]

does this work on Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon?

[@GuyWhoChad]

just in time, as i wiped out arch and installed linux mint :)

[@farzadmf]

I like its "user interface"

[@rashie]

👍👍

[@GXShade]

Kinda hope apt gets updated to function like nala or nala get integrated into apt

[@Ghfvhvfg]

Maybe contribute to apt why not

[@GXShade]

@@Ghfvhvfg I have no Idea how to program or develop.

[@Ghfvhvfg]

@@GXShade maybe a skill to learn ;)

[@GXShade]

​@@Ghfvhvfg you're not wrong.

[@Godalming123]

Can you do a video on niceos?

[@CesarPeron]

Finally, a Debian helper like yay?

[@Ghfvhvfg]

Maybe make apt feel like dnf…… better idea

[@StevieRayLou]

Nala is not available in debian12. Submitted as an issue.

[@KimmeU]

I love Nala, and have replaced it for Apt at my Linux Mint 20.3

[@shresthkumarlal285]

Mint 21 is out now you can update:-)

[@KimmeU]

@@shresthkumarlal285 I'll rather wait and use the updater and not re-install and see if there are problems with the updater reported online before I update my finely tuned btrfs root partition with an modified /etc/fstab

[@adrianmares269]

Is there something similar to nala on arch? It would be interesting

[@davidrohan3104]

Yay or Paru I guess but Pacman can be modified to do parallel downloads.

[@whydoyouaskdude]

Edit /etc/pacman.conf uncomment the line with parallel downloads and set a number. ParallelDownloads = 6 for example.

[@davidrohan3104]

@bigmike obama Well Yay or Paru also have the advantage of being an AUR helper.

[@mikewayland2576]

I just did a little experiment installing the chromium browser in Debian testing. Installing via apt took 7,4 sec, while nala took 9,25. Maybe if there are more packages that it will be faster. The best thing you can do to make apt faster is choosing a local mirror close to you. I use the netselect-apt package for this.

[@nightshade427]

Nala has a mirror locator, will find closest fastest mirror, nala fetch

[@Perry....]

Glad to see your one random test is the end all be all of data we need. Cool 🤷‍♀️

[@tonystorcke]

It is interesting, but badly implemented. Try typing : Nala search opera , and you will see what I mean. In this case it will find all kinds of software for Ham radio operators. Even if I type Nala search "opera", I still get the same result. For Nala to work as implemented, your search term has to be completely unique, and not used in any descriptions of other [packages. This is terminal eye candy. Hopefully functionality will improve.

[@fabricio4794]

Hi DT ..can you do a Review about Big Linux Distro?yeah this is an Arch Based and maybe this will be the Next Linux Mint

[@burning_KFC]

Nala is the best what happened to ubuntu for last 10 years imho

[@shrobbyy]

Is it safe to use it on servers where you host multiplayer servers for games?

[@shrobbyy]

@Antonios Ichyros Thank you

[@Shuliba]

It's not good practice to sudo bash -c "$(curl anything before read the file, also.

[@addgenious91]

Fish Shell + Tide Theme + Nala = Great User Experience

[@Chris-ip8uv]

I first saw this with Chris Titus. For my system, simply using apt was much faster than nala. Besides, I use Debian and don’t want a front end that looks like dnf.

[@rahilarious]

why do u not want nicer stuff?

[@Chris-ip8uv]

@@rahilarious I prefer apt. Its as simple as that. Its not about nicer, Its about what I want.

[@trayambakrai]

Nala means gutter in my language, kinda funny.

[@StevieRayLou]

I'll wait until nala is available in debian12 repos.

[@praus]

Been really enjoying using nala. While it is pretty, I’d say the appearance is more than just looks. For someone like myself, with dyslexia, it makes things a lot more readable. I suspect that had Linus had Nala instead of just apt, he might not have borked his Pop!_OS install. It would have been very clear that a ton of things were about to be removed.

[@ReadGospelOfJohn]

IMHO Maybe on some server systems it's okay, but on Linux Mint with Cinnamon Nala is simply rubbish. It messed up my sources.list and if I use Mint update manager I get errors when trying to update package lists. Okay, let say I may not use graphical updates manager and use nala in terminal. Can I ? Not exactly. Mint update manager is updating not only packages from repositories, but also other files - like cinnamon desklets. Nala can't do that, so I need to use update manager anyway. Other thing is speed. Maybe in US on 10Gb network on super duper server nala is fast, but in UK on my 500Mb Virgin broadband and old laptop it is slower then graphical update manager. So thanks - no!

[@gh0stzk-dotfiles]

A manager to make think ubuntu debian users they know how to use the terminal xD

[@darobison42]

Can we get a version based on aptitude instead? Way less dependency issues than apt. At least, in my experience. And I switched to Debian while Vista was in Beta. It's my birthday, so I do NOT want to do that math...

[@HiImKyle]

I don't mean to be rude when I say this but maybe slow down so you can actually understand what's on screen..?

[@rendrarahmat7062]

like a dnf in debian based

[@TheLazyJAK]

dnf badly needs something similar

[@tailsorange2872]

NALALALALALALALALALLALALALALA :LUL: JK - Hey DT - How about some Debian HURD how-to guides?

[@yaolet]

yet another half-working, semi-good alternative under linux