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DK Bose
Asked: 2014-02-22 04:10:07 +0800 CST

What is apt-get equivalent of "aptitude why"?

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In this answer, I came across this command:

aptitude why firefox

aptitude whylooks like an useful command but I don't want to install aptitude just for that. What is the apt-get equivalent of aptitude why?

apt

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Instead of apt-get I would have a look at apt-cache, though not one on one the same but close will be:

    apt-cache --installed rdepends firefox
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  2. People might want to know why an automatically installed package is present on the system. To get this information from the command line, you can use aptitude why package

    apt-get has no similar feature

    source:debian-handbook

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