Simple apt-get to Keep Your Ubuntu System Clean.

Aug 11, 2007 by Roger Wheatley

I received a couple questions this morning about “apt-get” and thought they were good in the sense that the answer helped to alleviate a couple of my personal annoyances. What are these annoyances? Well…

When I use “apt-get remove” the package is removed, but all the associated extra libraries (dependencies) are not. Additionally if I use apt-get to install a package, I always get the current package (in retrospect I’ll rename this as a benefit!), but sometimes I need to install an earlier version of a package.

Resolving these two issues is relatively easy, here’s how we can remove the dependencies (if you know they are not needed) along with the package:

apt-get -D remove the_name_of_the_package

And the simple way to install earlier versions of a package (let’s say “your_package1.2.3″):

apt-get install your_package=1.2.3

Very easy!

Remember to have your repositories updated to be able to install the packages you are looking for. Another article (link below) takes the repository step to a different level. In a nutshell it contains pretty much all the software repositories for Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) that could be found. You can read about that here: “The Best Ubuntu Linux Repository List“