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P A R T I
C O N N E C T I N G T H E B O A R D
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Although
apt
is designed to be operated from the command line, it’s very user-friendly and
easy to learn. There are GUIs for
apt
, such as the popular Synaptic Package Manager, but
they often struggle to run on the Pi due to the lack of memory. As a result, we recommend
that software be installed at the terminal.
Other Distributions
Raspbian, in common with most Debian-based distributions, uses a tool called
apt
as the
package manager. It’s not the only tool out there, and other distributions make different
choices. Pidora, for example, uses the
pacman
tool.
Pacman
is no more difficult to use than
apt
, but its syntax (the way it expects you to phrase
instructions to install new software or remove existing software) is different. For instruc-
tions on how to use
pacman
instead of
apt
, type
man pacman
at the Pidora terminal.
Other distributions may use the
yum
package manager. If you’re trying a distribution that
uses
yum
, simply type
man yum
at the terminal for instructions.
A package manager’s job is to keep track of all the software installed on the system. It doesn’t
just install new software—it also keeps tabs on what is currently installed, allows old soft-
ware to be removed and installs updates as they become available.
Package management is one of the areas where Linux differs greatly from operating systems
like Windows or OS X. Although it’s possible to manually download new software to install,
it’s far more common to use the built-in package management tools instead.
TIP
Before trying to install new software or upgrade existing software, you need to make sure
the
apt
cache is up to date. To do this, simply type the command
sudo apt-get update
.
Finding the Software You Want
The first step to installing a new piece of software is to find out what it’s called. The easiest
way to do this is to search the
cache
of available software packages. This cache is a list of all
the software available to install via
apt
, stored on Internet servers known as repositories.
The
apt
software includes a utility for managing this cache, called
apt-cache
. Using this
software, it’s possible to run a search on all the available software packages for a particular
word or phrase.