Using apt to find the package I want...

sephiroth · 2026-02-11 16:38:20

Okay, I may be getting older, but I do not remember apt being this... poor at returnign accurate results from a search. Mind you, I last used Debian with version 7. I went to Gentoo when Debian became a systemd distro, not a Linux distro. I still love and use Gentoo, but want something simpler for my daughter to use, so I am trying Devuan out in a VM. I had a slight issue installing, but I'm chalking that one up to the moons not being aligned.

I am in a very minimal install (nothing but the shell and SSH) and want to start installing only what we need. Okay, "apt search" should work, only it doesn't. If I do "apt search firefox" for example, I get things like bleachbit, elpa-atomic-chrome, cbindgen, dh-cargo, and pages of other things that have absolutely nothing to do with Firefox. It's like going to a Ford dealer, asking to see an F-150, and you're shown some teeny-tiny Mini Cooper. In Gentoo I can do "equery list firefox" and it shows me only those packages.

Am I doing something wrong or is this one of those things where you either need to pipe output (which I have zero faith in being accurate right now) to grep, or use some complex regex, or what? I may be over-thinking the complexity here, but searching for a package should be simple, and right now I can't find anything I want.

Last edited by sephiroth (2026-02-11 16:41:30)

rolfie · 2026-02-11 16:49:29

First comment: what you are getting back strongly depends on what you have specified in the sources.list.

Second comment: like you when I run "apt search firefox" I am getting an endless list of packages. Adding a grep might help.

I personally prefer to use "apt list" and sometimes "apt policy" to search for specific packages.

"apt list firefox" returns no output. When you add a * so that you use "apt list firefox*" you will get a longer list of firefox-esr related packages.

And firefox-esr is what is available on Debian/Devuan. If you want the latest firefox, you may need to go to the Mozilla web page.

sephiroth · 2026-02-11 16:57:08

Okay, I did not know about the list parameter. All I can find online are people (various distros, not just Devuan/Debian) complaining about the same thing I am, and solutions that do not appear to work. Indeed, using "apt list *firefox*" returns EXACTLY what I was looking for. Thank you again!

See? Apparently, it's a me-problem this time!

Would using Synaptic be okay after installing my shell stuff and then my desktop? Trying to find a good way of doing things that my daughter can understand.

Last edited by sephiroth (2026-02-11 16:57:59)

Duke Nukem · 2026-02-11 23:01:56

Synaptic is relatively easy to use. It can return some stuff that is irrelevant, especially if you choose to allow the description to be included in the search, but you can soon scroll down the list.

greenjeans · 2026-02-11 23:49:47

Been using Synaptic for many years now, it's my preferred way of doing things, easy to search, reasonably descriptive.

EDX-0 · 2026-02-12 05:13:54

heh i got into linux back in ubuntu 10.04 but never got used to how synaptic works, dunno didn't mesh with my thought process so a while ago i found a script named "debianUI" which implemented a TUI wrapper over apt with fzf, seems like the author deleted the repo so i began working and created my own version in posix shell, still using fzf and made it configurable, it fuzzy searches packages by name and short description, provide a scrollable preview with the long description of the package under the "cursor".

the script is available at https://github.com/eylles/devuan-script … /apt-ui.sh and https://git.devuan.org/eylles/devuan-sc … /apt-ui.sh

i reckon just a description of a TUI program is not enough to have a couple screenshots, expect colors to be different in your terminal emulator

laurie_dev1 · 2026-02-12 05:30:32

There is also the package "Aptitude" which should give you hits straight away on what you are looking for.

Here is the first 5 hits

aptitude search firefox
p   activity-aware-firefox                                           - wrapper to make Firefox aware of Plasma Desktop activities                 
i   firefox-esr                                                      - Mozilla Firefox web browser - Extended Support Release (ESR)               
p   firefox-esr-l10n-ach                                             - Acoli language package for Firefox ESR                                     
p   firefox-esr-l10n-af                                              - Afrikaans language package for Firefox ESR                                 
p   firefox-esr-l10n-all                                             - All language packages for Firefox ESR (meta)

From the man page

      search
           Searches for packages matching one of the patterns supplied on the command line. All packages which match any of the given patterns
           will be displayed; for instance, “aptitude search '~N' edit” will list all “new” packages and all packages whose name contains “edit”.
           For more information on search patterns, see the section “Search Patterns” in the aptitude reference manual.

               Note
               In the example above, “aptitude search '~N' edit” has two arguments after search and thus is searching for two patterns: “~N” and
               “edit”. As described in the search pattern reference, a single pattern composed of two sub-patterns separated by a space (such as
               “~N edit”) matches only if both patterns match. Thus, the command “aptitude search '~N edit'” will only show “new” packages whose
               name contains “edit”.
           Unless you pass the -F option, the output of aptitude search will look something like this:

               i   apt                             - Advanced front-end for dpkg
               pi  apt-build                       - frontend to apt to build, optimize and in
               cp  apt-file                        - APT package searching utility -- command-
               ihA raptor-utils                    - Raptor RDF Parser utilities

           Each search result is listed on a separate line. The first character of each line indicates the current state of the package: the most
           common states are p, meaning that no trace of the package exists on the system, c, meaning that the package was deleted but its
           configuration files remain on the system, i, meaning that the package is installed, and v, meaning that the package is virtual. The
           second character indicates the stored action (if any; otherwise a blank space is displayed) to be performed on the package, with the
           most common actions being i, meaning that the package will be installed, d, meaning that the package will be deleted, and p, meaning
           that the package and its configuration files will be removed. If the third character is A, the package was automatically installed.

           For a complete list of the possible state and action flags, see the section “Accessing Package Information” in the aptitude reference
           guide. To customize the output of search, see the command-line options -F and --sort.

JWM-Kit · 2026-02-12 14:42:01

I prefer to use Debian's package search. Even if I don't have a web browser on the machine, I can use my phone or another machine to search and find the names of the packages I wish to install.

Debian Package Search

Also synaptic is nice and simple. It provides good functionality without hiding things from the user.

chris2be8 · 2026-02-12 17:10:41

@EDX-0, for me your post just shows a couple of images saying "Content not viewable in your region". How are you posting them and do you have an option to make them viewable in all regions?

I'm in the UK if that helps. Where are you?

Duke Nukem · 2026-02-12 18:58:30

@chris2be8 Those images are on imgur. It is a casualty of the UK's Online Safety Act : imgur has decided that the cost of meeting its requirements is too great to be worthwhile so they have blocked access from the UK instead. I can't say I blame them.

fsmithred · 2026-02-12 19:13:53

I've had to use tor browser recently so see stuff on one site. Not imgur, and right now I don't recall which site. It's happened a few times in the past couple weeks. In US here.
https://www.torproject.org/download/

Mercury · 2026-02-12 21:10:48

Synaptic is exactly the right level of UI for me, and I do use it especially for searching and simple installation, but it has at least three major issues that years later are still WONTFIX'd:

1. Locking a package version in Synaptic won't lock it for CLI apt, and vice-versa. Boggles the mind; it should be using the same mechanism, but it's not. No idea why they invented that fifth wheel.
2. It doesn't display 32bit and 64bit packages together. 64bit packages shadow the 32bit ones. You have ot go to the architecture tab to see the 32bit ones.
3. It always does something every time on startup and after packages are installed that is just sloooow and the GUI is unusable during this time. Some refresh or rescan, I don't know. It's a few seconds, but it's always a frustrating few seconds that screw up the flow. Borderline intolerable on weaker systems. No progress bar, no indication of what it's doing.

dzz · 2026-02-13 05:05:10

$ apt-cache search firefox|grep "^firefox"
firefox-esr - Mozilla Firefox web browser - Extended Support Release (ESR)
firefox-esr-l10n-ach - Acoli language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-af - Afrikaans language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-all - All language packages for Firefox ESR (meta)
firefox-esr-l10n-an - Aragonese language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ar - Arabic language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ast - Asturian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-az - Azerbaijani language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-be - Belarusian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-bg - Bulgarian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-bn - Bengali language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-br - Breton language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-bs - Bosnian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ca - Catalan language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ca-valencia - Catalan (Valencia) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-cak - Kaqchikel language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-cs - Czech language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-cy - Welsh language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-da - Danish language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-de - German language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-dsb - Lower Sorbian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-el - Modern Greek language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-en-ca - English (Canada) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-en-gb - English (United Kingdom) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-eo - Esperanto language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-es-ar - Spanish (Argentina) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-es-cl - Spanish (Chile) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-es-es - Spanish (Spain) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-es-mx - Spanish (Mexico) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-et - Estonian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-eu - Basque language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-fa - Persian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ff - Fulah language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-fi - Finnish language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-fr - French language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-fur - Friulian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-fy-nl - Western Frisian (Netherlands) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ga-ie - Irish (Ireland) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-gd - Scottish Gaelic language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-gl - Galician language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-gn - Guarani language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-gu-in - Gujarati (India) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-he - Hebrew language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-hi-in - Hindi (India) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-hr - Croatian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-hsb - Upper Sorbian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-hu - Hungarian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-hy-am - Armenian (Armenia) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ia - Interlingua language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-id - Indonesian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-is - Icelandic language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-it - Italian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ja - Japanese language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ka - Georgian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-kab - Kabyle language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-kk - Kazakh language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-km - Khmer language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-kn - Kannada language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ko - Korean language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-lij - Ligurian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-lt - Lithuanian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-lv - Latvian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-mk - Macedonian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-mr - Marathi language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ms - Malay language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-my - Burmese language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-nb-no - Norwegian Bokmål (Norway) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ne-np - Nepali (Nepal) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-nl - Dutch language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-nn-no - Norwegian Nynorsk (Norway) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-oc - Occitan language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-pa-in - Panjabi (India) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-pl - Polish language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-pt-br - Portuguese (Brazil) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-pt-pt - Portuguese (Portugal) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-rm - Romansh language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ro - Romanian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ru - Russian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-sat - Santali language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-sc - Sardinian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-sco - Scots language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-si - Sinhala language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-sk - Slovak language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-skr - Saraiki language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-sl - Slovenian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-son - Songhai languages language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-sq - Albanian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-sr - Serbian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-sv-se - Swedish (Sweden) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-szl - Silesian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ta - Tamil language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-te - Telugu language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-tg - Tajik language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-th - Thai language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-tl - Tagalog language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-tr - Turkish language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-trs - Chicahuaxtla Triqui language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-uk - Ukrainian language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-ur - Urdu language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-uz - Uzbek language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-vi - Vietnamese language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-xh - Xhosa language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-zh-cn - Chinese (China) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-l10n-zh-tw - Chinese (Taiwan) language package for Firefox ESR
firefox-esr-mobile-config - Default mobile-friendly configuration for Firefox ESR

casualty of the UK's Online Safety Act

Not the only one (bitchute was first) and coming your way fast wherever you are. And they're coming for the vpn's next..

On topic, point here is '|grep "^whatever"' picks only lines beginning with whatever. No use for synaptic here but,, whatever works for you.

Last edited by dzz (2026-02-13 05:17:27)

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#1 2026-02-11 16:38:20

Using apt to find the package I want...

#2 2026-02-11 16:49:29

Re: Using apt to find the package I want...

#3 2026-02-11 16:57:08

Re: Using apt to find the package I want...

#4 2026-02-11 23:01:56

Re: Using apt to find the package I want...

#5 2026-02-11 23:49:47

Re: Using apt to find the package I want...

#6 2026-02-12 05:13:54

Re: Using apt to find the package I want...

#7 2026-02-12 05:30:32

Re: Using apt to find the package I want...

#8 2026-02-12 14:42:01

Re: Using apt to find the package I want...

#9 2026-02-12 17:10:41

Re: Using apt to find the package I want...

#10 2026-02-12 18:58:30

Re: Using apt to find the package I want...

#11 2026-02-12 19:13:53

Re: Using apt to find the package I want...

#12 2026-02-12 21:10:48

Re: Using apt to find the package I want...

#13 2026-02-13 05:05:10

Re: Using apt to find the package I want...

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