Deb-Pacman : A Pacman-style Frontend For APT Package Manager

Apt, the Advanced Packaging Tool, is a powerful command-line tool used to install, update, upgrade, and remove packages in Debian and its derivatives like Ubuntu. Several front-ends are available for Apt, including Aptitude, Synaptic, and the Ubuntu Software Center, to name a few. Today, I am going to introduce yet another frontend for the APT package manager called Deb-Pacman.

What is Deb-Pacman?

Deb-Pacman is a command-line utility designed to emulate the feel of the Arch Linux Pacman package manager for Debian, Ubuntu and openSUSE users.

By using Deb-Pacman, you can use the same pacman commands that you would use under Arch Linux to install, update, upgrade, and remove packages on a Debian-based system.

You can simply invoke "pacman" instead of "apt" command on your Ubuntu system. Deb-Pacman simply emulates the Archlinux's Pacman package manager feel for Debian users who may prefer the style of Pacman over Apt. This can be helpful for those who get used to pacman.

As you know already, Apt itself was originally designed as a front-end for dpkg, which was developed by Ian Murdock (the founder of Debian project) for Debian OS to install, remove and provide information about .deb packages. So, technically speaking, Deb-pacman is a front end for APT, which is a frontend for Dpkg. In other words, it is just a wrapper.

In this brief guide we will see how to install Deb-Pacman in Debian, Ubuntu and its derivatives and how to run Pacman Commands on a Debian-based systems.

Install Deb-Pacman, a Frontend for APT Package Manager

Download Deb-Pacman.deb file from the releases page and then install it like below on any Debian-based systems.

$ wget https://gitlab.com/trivoxel/utilities/deb-pacman/uploads/460d83f8711c1ab5e16065e57e7eeabc/deb-pacman-2.0-0.deb

$ sudo dpkg -i deb-pacman-2.0-0.deb

$ sudo apt-get -f install

To manually install Deb-pacman, simply download the Deb-pacman file and make it executable. Then, copy it to your PATH, for example /usr/bin/.

Run Pacman Commands in Debian-based Systems using Deb-Pacman

Deb-Pacman supports all the major and most common commands so far. So, you can start using it right away. Let me show you a few examples.

To update a Debian-based system (E.g. Ubuntu), we use the following commands:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade

Right? Yes.

But, we don't need to use the apt commands in our Ubuntu system anymore.

From now on, you can simply use Pacman to update your Ubuntu system using the following command:

$ sudo pacman -Syu

Have a look at the following animated demonstration created from my Ubuntu 18.04 LTS system:

See? When I run the "sudo pacman -Syu", Deb-pacman automatically calls "sudo apt update" and "sudo apt-get upgrade" commands.

Using Deb-Pacman in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS:

Similarly, you can run the most Pacman commands to install, remove, update your Ubuntu system.

For instance, to install Vim, you can simply run:

$ sudo pacman -S vim

To remove a package, run:

$ sudo pacman -R vim

To remove orphaned packages, run:

$ sudo pacman -Rns <package(s)>

The above command is equivalent to "sudo apt autoremove" command.

Please note that Deb-pacman doesn't support all options of Pacman. As of now, It supports only most-commonly used operations such as install, sync, remove, update and upgrade.

To get help, run:

$ pacman -h
usage: pacman <operation> [...]
operations:
pacman {-h --help}
pacman {-V --version}
pacman {-R --remove} [options] <package(s)>
pacman {-S --sync} [options] [package(s)]
pacman {-U --upgrade} [options] <file(s)>

options:
pacman <operation> {--noconfirm} [package(s)]
Only one supported operation in this version of "Deb Pacman"

Limited to eight (8) [packages] (seven (7) with <option>)

Frequently Asked Questions

Here's the FAQ about Deb-Pacman:

Other front-ends

We have already written about two other frontends namely Sysget and Pacapt. Unlike Deb-pacman, sysget and pacapt are not just a frontend for APT but also for many popular package managers such as Yum, Pacman, Dnf, Nix, Pkg and Zypper etc. For more details, please take a look at the following links.

• Sysget – A Front-end For Popular Package Managers
• How To Use ArchLinux’s Pacman Package Manager In Other Unix-like OSs

Hope this was useful.

Resource:

• Deb-Pacman GitLab Repository