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Ubuntu MATE's Lead Creates a Nifty Tool to Help Install 3rd Party Deb Packages

,   and  Ankush Das
2 min read

Ubuntu MATE’s lead, Martin Wimpress, has another fun project for Linux users.

In case you did not know, Martin regularly develops something interesting. Last year, we covered Quickemu, which helps create virtual machines in Linux through a QEMU-based GUI tool making the process easy.

Now, he is back with an interesting “deb-get” tool that aims to imitate the functionality of “apt-get” for 3rd party .deb packages.

Let us take a closer look at it.

Deb Get: Seamlessly Install 3rd Party Deb Packages Using the CLI

When it comes to software packages that aren’t available in the official repositories (like Google Chrome, Vivaldi), you will have to add a PPA (unofficial/official) or download the .deb file and get it installed manually.

What if you can simply install it using the terminal as if it is available in the official repositories?

That’s where the deb-get tool comes in.

Usually, when installing a package through the terminal, you utilize either of the following commands:

sudo apt install packagename

or

sudo apt-get install packagename

You get to keep the same format and simply replace apt-get with this tool, which should look like this:

sudo deb-get install packagename

As an example, usually, we needed to add the PPA or download the deb file when installing Vivaldi on Linux.

Now, if you set up the deb-get tool on your system (setup instructions at the end of this article), you can easily install Vivaldi using the following command:

sudo deb-get install vivaldi-stable

And, just like the apt-get upgrade process, you can upgrade packages using the following command:

sudo deb-get upgrade

Note: While it makes it easy to install third-party .deb packages, you will be limited to a verified list supported by the tool. You can expect the list of supported packages to expand soon, but it already supports many essential applications.

You can also check the list of available packages that you can install with deb-get using the following command:

sudo deb-get list
deb-get

Setting Up Deb-Get on Ubuntu-based Distributions

The deb-get tool works with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (I tested it) and should work with other Ubuntu-based distributions.

You can install it on your system using the command below:

sudo apt install curl && curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wimpysworld/deb-get/main/deb-get | sudo -E bash -s install deb-get

Or, you can download the deb package for it manually from its GitHub releases section.

To explore more about it, and the available commands/functionalities, you can head to its GitHub page.

What do you think of deb-get attempting to mimic apt-get functionality for third-party packages? Do you think it is useful? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Via: OMG!Ubuntu!

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