software management Archives • Linux Tips

Use ‘apt’ To Download A Program And Its Dependencies

In this article, we’ll discuss a way to use ‘apt’ to download a program and its dependencies. The usual reason to do this is to install said program on an offline computer. We’ll be doing it all nice and neatly, just using the ‘apt’ application along the way. It won’t be all that difficult, but will be easy to link to and reference.

As I said, the usual reason to do this is because you have a computer that’s not online and you want to install some software on that computer. This could be a remedy for when you need wireless drivers in order to connect the device, or other sorts of situations. It’s a handy way to get those drivers up and running, so we might as well learn how to do so today.

We’ll be using ‘apt’ for this. We’ve used ‘apt’ for all sorts of software management tasks in the past. In fact, in the past this required a bit more effort. You’d use the ‘–download-only’ flag and get some files in your apt archives directory. Today, it’s just a quick task that outputs a handy file that is extremely portable.

In fact, this article really only needs one command, making ‘apt’ do its thing. It’s not all that difficult, either. By the way, if you don’t already know, ‘apt’ stands for Advanced Package Tool. Anyhow, I’ll still make it an article – as it’s a useful one to know and reference.

Download A Program And Its Dependencies:

This article requires an open terminal, like many other articles on this site. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

With your terminal emulator now open, you need to know the name of the program you want to download. For example, I tested this with ‘openjdk-17-jre’ and it worked as expected. (For the commands you’ll use, I’ll just use my traditional brackets.) Before I tested with openjdk, I made sure it had dependencies, and it did. To see if it had dependencies, I used this command:

apt show <package_name>

1	apt show <package_name>

Once you see that it has dependencies, you can go straight to downloading the program and its dependencies. You no longer need any long commands, it’s just (even if it doesn’t have dependencies):

sudo apt download <package_name>

1	sudo apt download <package_name>

All you have to do at that point is wait for the files to download. When they’re done downloading you can find the file in your ~/Downloads directory combined into a single compressed file. In my case, the filename was openjdk-17-jre.tar.gq and the download completed without error.

The process is the same if you have dependencies or not. The reason we pay attention to dependencies in this article is so that you know to check and make sure those dependencies are included, so that you’re able to install the software on your offline computer.

And, with all that said, now is a good time to verify that it contains all the files it should contain. Assuming the files are what you expected, with dependencies as needed, now is the time to sneakernet them to the offline computer, where you can install the program by first installing the dependencies before installing the program.

NOTES: It does build an ‘install.sh’ which should let you install the program and dependencies in one fell swoop, but it accessed the ‘net in my testing. So, just do ’em manually if you want to be sure, otherwise make it executable and give it a shot. This will only work if the versions are all compatible with the offline computer. If that’s not the case, you could end up in dependency hell or perhaps not able to install the program at all.

Closure:

And there you have it… You have yet another article! This one is handy if you want to install a program and its dependencies on an offline computer. It may also be handy if you want to establish a base-line and standardize on that specific version of the software. In that case, you’ll have a copy of what it once was. It’s something you can reference and restore as needed. But, yeah, it’s most likely to be used by people who want to install software on offline computer.

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How To: Completely Remove Software In Ubuntu

Today’s article is going to show you how to completely remove software in Ubuntu. This will also work for other distros that use apt as their package manager. It’s a pretty handy tool to have in your toollbox, because we’ll not only be removing software, we’ll also be removing any config files associated with said software. It’s not all that difficult, and anyone should be able to understand this article.

When you ‘remove’ software, be it with the GUI or with the terminal, you’re actually only removing the software itself. You’re often leaving behind the config files (if there are any) and the ‘remove’ may leave dependencies still installed. The reasoning for leaving config files behind is presumably so that you can reinstall the software and have the same configurations you had earlier in time.

As you can guess, that’s not always a good thing… It may well be those configuration files that caused some sort of error in the first place. It may well be those config files that prompted you to remove the software in the first place. Erasing and starting anew might be your only realistic path forward, especially if reverting to backups did not work.

So… That’s why we have this article. This article is going to teach you how to completely remove software in Ubuntu. If you want, you can still try removing software and reinstalling (as a troubleshooting step), and this then becomes one of your later troubleshooting strategies. Read on, and you’ll see…

Completely Remove Software In Ubuntu:

When you remove software with the terminal, you probably do it like so:

sudo apt remove <application>

1	sudo apt remove <application>

That’s great. It removes the application and may even remove some of the dependencies it pulled in when you installed it. This is not necessarily a bad thing – but we want to completely remove software in Ubuntu, and this is how you do it.

As I said in the preamble, using the above command will likely leave your configuration files behind (if there are any) and some dependencies. With the ‘purge’ command, you’ll get rid of those configuration files. To do this, you’ll want to:

sudo apt purge <application>

1	sudo apt purge <application>

While that’s great and all, when you installed your application you may well have installed some other applications (dependencies), that is some applications that the software depended on. Those too may have config files related with them and to really ensure you’ve completely removed the software, you’ll want to do an autoremove.

If you’re unfamiliar with the autoremove function of apt, the man page has it summed up nicely:

autoremove is used to remove packages that were automatically installed to satisfy dependencies for other packages and are now no longer needed as dependencies changed or the package(s) needing them were removed in the meantime.

You don’t specify an application with the ‘autoremove’ command, you just run:

sudo apt autoremove

1	sudo apt autoremove

That should do it, actually. The last command should remove any dependencies that were installed and not removed automatically when you purged the software with the commands above.

Closure:

And there you have it! It’s another article! I still haven’t missed a day, and I’m well beyond my initial obligations. This time, the article tells you how to completely remove software in Ubuntu – and it’ll work in any distro that uses apt. It’s a pretty simple thing, but it’s worth knowing. Eventually, it’s bound to come in handy.

How To: Install PIP In Linux

Today’s article is going to teach you how to install PIP in Linux. PIP is a reverse acronym meaning ‘PIP Installs Packages” and it’s a handy tool for the installation and management of Python applications. This article should be pretty short and easy for anyone to understand.

This article is going to be pretty basic, merely telling you how to install PIP and not a whole lot more. The reason I write this article is because it needs to be written. I should also point out that Python is a programming language, though I’d expect most visitors to know that already. But, yes, this article needed to be written.

See, I wanted to tell you about a lovely piece of software (or three), but they all need to be installed with PIP. So, rather than write out the long installation instructions for various distros and package managers each time, I figured I’d make a single article that told you how to install PIP.

That’ll save some time and effort. I can refer back to this when those articles are written. There are many Python applications that can be installed with relative ease – just like you’re installing from your regular Linux repositories. PIP’s Python applications can be installed and uninstalled in the terminal while using PIP, so it’s quite easy.

So then, let’s learn how to…

Install PIP In Linux:

Installing PIP requires a terminal. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

Once you have the terminal open, you can install the appropriate PIP. Most folks will be using Python 3, but a smattering of people will still be using Python 2. I will list the installation instructions, where applicable, with Python 2’s instructions first.

Debian/Ubuntu/derivatives:

sudo apt install python-pip
sudo apt install python3-pip

1 2	sudo apt install python-pip sudo apt install python3-pip

SUSE/openSUSE/derivatives:

sudo zypper install python-pip
sudo zypper install python3-pip

1 2	sudo zypper install python-pip sudo zypper install python3-pip

Fedora/derivatives:

sudo dnf install python-pip
sudo dnf install python3-pip

1 2	sudo dnf install python-pip sudo dnf install python3-pip

RHEL/CentOS/derivatives:

sudo yum install epel-release
sudo yum install python-pip
sudo yum install python3-pip

sudo yum install epel-release

sudo yum install python-pip

sudo yum install python3-pip

Arch/Manjaro/derivatives:

sudo pacman -S python2-pip
sudo pacman -S python-pip

1 2	sudo pacman -S python2-pip sudo pacman -S python-pip

Slackware:

Read Install PIP For Slackwaare Instructions.

The basic usage of PIP is pip install <package>, pip uninstall <package>, and pip search <package>. My readers are smart enough to understand that without further instructions. You can also learn a lot by using man pip. Now you know how to install PIP in Linux.

Closure:

And there you have it. You have an article telling you how to install PIP in Linux, enabling you to install Python packages/programs quickly and easily inside the Linux terminal. It’s also one more article in my series of articles. I’m now well within a month of when the project is allowed to end and I still have a lot of articles left in me, so I’d expect it to keep going for long into the future. Or at least until someone steps up and takes the site over for me.

‘sudo apt remove’ vs ‘sudo apt purge’

Today’s article is going to cover ‘sudo apt remove’ vs ‘sudo apt purge’ and will be in a different format than some articles. It’s a brief article meant to answer a specific question. It’s nothing more, and nothing less.

The question would be, “What’s the difference between sudo apt remove and sudo apt purge?” It’s a perfectly fine question, thanks. This article will answer it.

It does open up an idea. If you have any questions, you can always just “Ask KGIII” a question. For example, the question prompting this article might be, “What’s the difference between sudo apt autoremove vs sudo apt purge?” It’s a legitimate question, and a good example, of the kinds of questions I’d welcome.

So, for fun, we can pretend someone asked this question!

If you don’t ask me any questions, I may just have to pretend you did and write my questions and answers all by myself! However, this is the kind of question I’d be looking for. Leave a comment with a question, thanks!

If you lie about your email address to ask a question, that’s fine – just don’t also opt to subscribe to responses. It results in some ‘spammy’ domain behavior and I’d like to avoid that. Use @example.com, if you want. It should work but there is no example.com of note so bouncing emails won’t be a problem. On the other hand, others can attest to the fact that I’ve sent zero spam messages.

‘sudo apt remove’ vs ‘sudo apt purge’:

In this case, both of these commands are used to remove software from your system. These commands are valid in distros like Debian or Ubuntu, systems that use APT as the package management system. If you want to remove software, the commands would look like one of the following:

sudo apt remove <package_name>
sudo apt purge <package_name>

1 2	sudo apt remove <package_name> sudo apt purge <package_name>

With both of these commands, you’ll remove the software. It will not only remove the software, it’ll mark the software as uninstalled in your database of installed applications. This means you can opt to install the software again.

But, there is a difference. When you use, you just remove the software itself. When you use sudo apt purge <package_name>, it not only removes the package, it also removes the configuration files.

In theory, you can do ‘apt remove’ and then re-install the application at a later date while keeping the pre-existing, pre-removal configuration. The regular ‘apt remove’ doesn’t touch configuration files, it only removes those things that were listed as files in the packages manifest and created during the installation process.

So, when you run ‘apt remove’ you’re removing it from your system. When you run ‘apt purge’ you’re making sure (ideally) no traces of it remain. I say “ideally” because it’s not as cut and dry as one might think. Package management isn’t all that smart and things like MySQL will leave behind a user, and other package installs will do similar.

As a bonus, if you’ve seriously messed up an application’s configuration then you can purge it and have a clean slate, with (ideally) no previous configuration files left over. Of course, if you just use ‘apt remove’ then your configuration files may still exist. If you want to maybe install the application again, and you were happy with the way it was configured, you should use ‘apt remove’. Otherwise, use ‘apt purge’.

If you, like me, are curious as to how the purge command works (it’s not all that intelligent) then click here to learn how the purge command works. The answer is well-written and, more importantly, is correct (inasmuch as I understand). It’s well worth reading, for a better understanding. As I mentioned elsewhere, the package manager isn’t all that intelligent – but it is what it is and it’s much easier than doing it all yourself!

Closure:

And there you have it. You have another article! This one is kinda like a pretend person asked a question and I answered the question in the form of an article. I’d like to do that sort of thing every couple of weeks, but it’d require someone to ask me questions.

I don’t mind if they’re questions I have to research. I think it’d be an interesting new aspect to the site. We can call it ‘Reader Questions’ and maybe give out a prize of some type if your question is chosen. I mean, you shouldn’t need a prize but it might motivate a few of you. Leave a ‘Reader Question’ as a comment on this post and we’ll see how it goes! If it looks like it might work, I’ll add it as a new category.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.