Most Ubuntu users prefer Software Center or synaptic for package management. Those who love the command-line definitely use apt all the time. In this article we will explore another package manager available in the default repos – xara. xara is written in GTK+ and has powerful capabilities.
xara simplifies the complex task of package management for a layman and is quite similar to Octopi, the pacman front-end available on Manjaro. It works on all Debian and Ubuntu based distros.
Features
- unified view, minimal popups
- simplified query syntax tree (e.g. specify sections, depends etc.)
- view package details
- search and highlight description
- shows all available versions or newest
- export details of selected package in plain text
- run apt queries
- edit database search options to fine tune searches
The only limitation with xara is, it doesn’t retain history. You have to refer to apt history from /var/log/apt/history.log.
Installation
To install xara on Ubuntu, run:
$ sudo apt-get install xara-gtk
Rating
Features: 4/5
Usability: 4.5/5
TuxDiary 