O aptitude é um invólucro para o dpkg exatamente como o apt-get / apt-cache, mas é uma ferramenta completa para pesquisar / instalar / remover / consultar. Alguns exemplos que o apt pode não fornecer:
$ aptitude why libc6
i w64codecs Depends libc6 (>= 2.3.2)
$ aptitude why-not libc6
Unable to find a reason to remove libc6.
$ aptitude show libc6
Package: libc6
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 2.9-4ubuntu6
Priority: required
Section: libs
Maintainer: Ubuntu Core developers <[email protected]>
Uncompressed Size: 12.1M
Depends: libgcc1, findutils (>= 4.4.0-2ubuntu2)
Suggests: locales, glibc-doc
Conflicts: libterm-readline-gnu-perl (< 1.15-2),
tzdata (< 2007k-1), tzdata-etch, nscd (< 2.9)
Replaces: belocs-locales-bin
Provides: glibc-2.9-1
Description: GNU C Library: Shared libraries
Contains the standard libraries that are used by nearly all programs
on the system. This package includes shared versions of the standard
C library and the standard math library, as well as many others.