Frequently Asked Question

What is the difference between apt and apt-get?

apt-get and apt-cache were the original front ends to the Debian APT library: stable, scriptable, and a bit terse. apt arrived in 2014 (Debian 8 "Jessie") as a friendlier, more interactive command that wraps the most useful subcommands from both tools into a single binary, adds a progress bar, colours, and a clearer summary of what it is about to do.

In practice, on a terminal you should reach for apt install, apt update, apt search, and apt show. In shell scripts, Dockerfiles, and Ansible playbooks you should still prefer apt-get because its output is stable and machine-readable; apt reserves the right to change its formatting between releases and even warns "WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts." Both ultimately drive the same libapt-pkg underneath.