aptitude or apt-get?

@waldo:

I hope I'm not opening up a big can of worms. That's not intended here.

I've searched google and find a few older articles comparing the difference but for a newbie like me it's really hard to tell if things have changed over the last 2 years. It appears that aptitude was probably the better of the two, but that apt-get has improved.

The main reason I ask is that it appears everyone uses apt-get, almost any tutorial I find out there uses apt-get instead of aptitude.
Doesn't matter really all that much. I tend to use aptitude more often than not cause it's a bit "smarter" usually. It really just comes down to what you're more familiar/comfortable with ;)

FYI, if you launch aptitude without any parameter, it will launch a full text UI.

If you use it with parameters, it more or less acts like apt-get.

Personally, I use aptitude from the commandline (so, "aptitude update && aptitude dist-upgrade" or "aptitude install foo")

The main difference is in their conflict resolution. So, if an update is available, but it needs other packages to be upgraded/downgraded/installed… they handle the situation differently.

If you're only ever tracking an ubuntu release or debian stable, in practice, there's not going to be any difference. OTOH, if you're tracking mostly debian stable, but with some packages from testing or unstable, they work differently and you might prefer one or the other. In my experience apt-get handles more situations than aptitude, but its conflict resolution is "dumb" and mostly involves upgrading packages until it works. aptitude will often give you a list of choices on how to resolve a conflict, some of which may be much "smarter" than apt-get.

I am using aptitude because of this link

http://pthree.org/2007/08/12/aptitude-vs-apt-get/

I am felt comfortable using aptitude since it will do the same way like apt-get.

You're all missing an important difference:

mikeage@linode ~$ aptitude -h | tail -n 1
                  This aptitude does not have Super Cow Powers.
mikeage@linode ~$ apt-get -h | tail -n 1
                       This APT has Super Cow Powers.

and as a result

mikeage@linode ~$ aptitude moo
There are no Easter Eggs in this program.
mikeage@linode ~$ apt-get moo
         (__)
         (oo)
   /------\/
  / |    ||
 *  /\---/\
    ~~   ~~
...."Have you mooed today?"...

Although, to be fair

mikeage@linode ~$ aptitude -v moo
There really are no Easter Eggs in this program.
mikeage@linode ~$ aptitude -vv moo
Didn't I already tell you that there are no Easter Eggs in this program?
mikeage@linode ~$ aptitude -vvv moo
Stop it!
mikeage@linode ~$ aptitude -vvvv moo
Okay, okay, if I give you an Easter Egg, will you go away?
mikeage@linode ~$ aptitude -vvvvv moo
All right, you win.

                               /----\
                       -------/      \
                      /               \
                     /                |
   -----------------/                  --------\
   ----------------------------------------------
mikeage@linode ~$ aptitude -vvvvvv moo
What is it?  It's an elephant being eaten by a snake, of course.

~$ aptitude -vvvvvv moo What is it? It's an elephant being eaten by a snake, of course.

Well that just settles it. With that kind of sick humor I've just got to use aptitude.

aptitude has been recommended by Debian for years now; personally, I switched to aptitude the day that apt-get tried to remove libc6 and aptitude fixed the problem.