The synaptic utility

This is a graphical form of package management; it is based on the APT. This powerful GUI utility enables us to install, update, or remove packages within an easy-to-use environment. Using the synaptic utility enables us to manage packages without requiring us to work at the Command Prompt. Let's take a look at the synaptic utility within the Ubuntu 18 system. The synaptic utility is not installed within Ubuntu 18 by default. We can see information about the synaptic utility before we install it by using the apt-cache command:

root@ubuntu:/home/philip# apt-cache showpkg synaptic
 Package: synaptic
 Versions:
 0.83 (/var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_xenial_universe_binary-amd64_Packages)
 Description Language:
 File: /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_xenial_universe_binary-amd64_Packages
 MD5: d4fb8e90c9684f1113e56123c017d85f
 Reverse Depends:
 aptoncd,synaptic 0.57.7
 apt,synaptic
 mate-menu,synaptic
 lubuntu-desktop,synaptic
 cinnamon-desktop-environment,synaptic
 update-notifier,synaptic 0.75.12
 apt,synaptic
 update-manager,synaptic
 Dependencies:
 0.83 - libapt-inst2.0 (2 0.8.16~exp12) libapt-pkg5.0 (2 1.1~exp9) libc6 (2 2.14) libept1.5.0 (0 (null)) libgcc1 (2 1:3.0) libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (2 2.22.0) libglib2.0-0 (2 2.14.0) libgtk-3-0 (2 3.3.16) libpango-1.0-0 (2 1.14.0) libstdc++6 (2 5.2) libvte-2.91-
 root@ubuntu:/home/philip#

Based on the preceding screenshot, we can see that there are a number of dependencies that the synaptic utility depends on. Let's install the synaptic utility by using the apt-get command:

root@ubuntu:/home/philip# apt-get install synaptic
 Reading package lists... Done
 Building dependency tree
 Reading state information... Done
 The following NEW packages will be installed:
 docbook-xml libept1.5.0 librarian0 rarian-compat sgml-data synaptic
 0 upgraded, 6 newly installed, 0 to remove and 81 not upgraded.
 Need to get 1,785 kB of archives.
 After this operation, 11.6 MB of additional disk space will be used.
 Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Setting up docbook-xml (4.5-7.3) ...
 Processing triggers for sgml-base (1.26+nmu4ubuntu1) ...
 root@ubuntu:/home/philip#

We have just installed the synaptic utility. We could launch the synaptic utility to explore its features from the Search your computer button at the top left-hand corner of the Ubuntu 18 system, based on the following screenshot:

As soon as we select the synaptic package manager, it will prompt us for authentication, as can be seen in the following screenshot:

Once this is authenticated, we will then be presented with the synaptic utility. We can use the Search button to find specific packages. The following screenshot depicts the Search function dialog box:

Awesome job! As can be seen in the preceding screenshot, we can perform searches by simply entering the desired package name. When compared to the command-line counterpart, it's much easier to use a GUI. To perform a search, we would simply select the Search button. Also, we can update the package database from within the synaptic utility by simply selecting the Reload button:

Great! As you can see, the synaptic utility is very intuitive in nature. It can be navigated in a similar way to other GUI programs.