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APT

The easiest way to manage installing, upgrading, and removing software is using APT (Advanced Packaging Tool) which comes from Debian. If a piece of software is packaged in Debian and works on the Raspberry Pi's ARM architecture, it should also be available in Raspbian.

To install or remove packages you need root user permissions, so your user needs to be in sudoers or you must be logged in as root. Read more about users and root.

To install new packages, or update existing ones, you will need an internet connection.

Note that installing software uses up disk space on your SD card, so you should keep an eye on disk usage and use an appropriately sized SD card.

Also note that a lock is performed while software is installing, so you cannot install multiple packages at the same time.

Software sources

APT keeps a list of software sources on your Pi in a file at /etc/apt/sources.list. Before installing software, you should update your package list with apt-get update:

sudo apt-get update

Installing a package with APT

sudo apt-get install tree

Typing this command should inform the user how much disk space the package will take up and asks for confirmation of the package installation. Entering Y (or just hitting Enter, as yes is the default action) will allow the installation to occur. This can be bypassed by adding the -y flag to the command:

sudo apt-get install tree -y

Installing this package makes tree available for the user.

Using an installed package

tree is a command line tool which provides a visualisation of the directory structure of the current directory, and all it contains.

  • Typing tree runs the tree command. For example:
tree
..
├── hello.py
├── games
│   ├── asteroids.py
│   ├── pacman.py
│   ├── README.txt
│   └── tetris.py
  • Typing man tree gives the manual entry for the package tree
  • Typing whereis tree shows where tree lives:
tree: /usr/bin/tree

Uninstalling a package with APT

Remove

You can uninstall a package with apt-get remove:

sudo apt-get remove tree

The user is prompted to confirm the removal. Again, the -y flag will auto-confirm.

Purge

You can also choose to completely remove the package and its associated configuration files with apt-get purge:

sudo apt-get purge tree

Upgrading existing software

If software updates are available, you can get the updates with apt-get update and install the updates with apt-get upgrade, which will upgrade all of your packages.

Searching for software

You can search the archives for a package with a given keyword with apt-cache search:

apt-cache search locomotive
sl - Correct you if you type `sl' by mistake