New options for traditional Unix commands
apt for apt-get
As the front end for dpkg, the venerable package manager for Debian and its derivatives, apt-get
has been expanded with dozens of utilities over the years, becoming bewildering for new users. As a response to this expansion, apt
simplifies apt-get
's basic commands while including the most useful options from utilities such as apt-cache
and apt-query
(Figure 5). In addition, forthcoming versions of apt
will allow editing of package sources. Once the command is entered, then feedback is the same as for apt-get
. The result is so convenient that even long-time Debian users have taken to using apt
.
dnf for yum
Traditionally, yum
has functioned as the package manager for RPM packages. Unfortunately, API documentation and expertise have long been lacking in yum
, making bug fixing and improvements difficult. For this reason, dnf
has been slowly replacing yum
in the past few years (Figure 6). In addition to being a complete replacement, dnf
allows extensions in several programming languages and has faster dependency resolution than yum
. Also, dnf
has abilities that yum
lacks, such as the ability to switch repositories if needed or to delete old kernels. In general, dnf
is much quicker than yum
and flexible enough to skip unnecessary steps to speed up installation. For instance, if you have just installed one package, dnf
will not update the package list for a second one.
htop for top
To display applications that use the most memory or take up the most RAM on a system, top
has been the classic choice. Installed by default on Linux systems, top
displays only plain text – which is not surprising, considering it was developed in 1984. By contrast, htop
(Figure 7), developed in 2004, uses color to make reading easier. Unlike top
, htop
supports horizontal and vertical scrolling, as well as searching and the use of a mouse. These features make replacing top
with htop
a no brainer for system administrators.
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