Managing Packages with apt on Ubuntu

apt is the package manager you’ll use most on an Ubuntu Server VPS. This covers the everyday commands: keeping your system up to date, installing and removing software, searching for packages, and tidying up afterwards. Everything here applies equally to Debian, since Ubuntu’s package tooling is built directly on top of it.

Updating package lists and upgrading

apt update refreshes the local list of available packages and versions from your configured repositories. It doesn’t install anything itself – run it first, before installing or upgrading anything:

sudo apt update

apt upgrade then installs the newest available versions of your currently installed packages:

sudo apt upgrade

For upgrades that may need to install or remove packages to resolve dependencies (for example a new kernel version), use:

sudo apt full-upgrade

Installing and removing packages

sudo apt install nginx
sudo apt remove nginx

apt remove uninstalls the package but leaves configuration files behind. To remove those as well, use:

sudo apt purge nginx

Searching for packages

apt search nginx

To see details about a specific package before installing it – version, description, dependencies:

apt show nginx

Listing installed packages

apt list --installed

Pipe it through grep to check for a specific package:

apt list --installed | grep nginx

apt vs apt-get

You’ll see both apt and apt-get used in documentation and tutorials. For almost everything covered here, they’re interchangeable – apt is the newer, user-facing command introduced to consolidate the most commonly used features of apt-get and apt-cache into one tool with better default output (progress bars, colour) and more sensible defaults. apt-get still exists and is more stable for use in scripts, since its output format is guaranteed not to change between versions. For interactive, day-to-day use on your VPS, apt is the one to reach for.

Holding a package at its current version

If you need to stop a specific package from being upgraded – for example, you’re pinned to a known-working version of a database engine – you can put it on hold:

sudo apt-mark hold nginx

Held packages are skipped by apt upgrade until you release the hold:

sudo apt-mark unhold nginx

Check what’s currently held with:

apt-mark showhold

Use holds sparingly – a held package won’t receive security patches either, so you’re taking on responsibility for tracking that yourself.

Cleaning up

Over time, installing and removing packages leaves behind dependencies that are no longer needed by anything else on the system. Clear these out with:

sudo apt autoremove

You can also clear apt’s local cache of downloaded .deb files, which is safe to do and can free up meaningful disk space on a small VPS:

sudo apt clean

A sensible routine to run periodically is apt update, followed by apt upgrade, followed by apt autoremove – though for security patches specifically, you may want to automate this. We cover that in our post on unattended-upgrades.