1

Where can I manually download stuff from (in a user friendly way) without using the Ubuntu software center?

And if that's not possible, how can I fix the proxy restrictions of the software center. It doesn't seem to work at the only place where I have good internet access although all other sites work perfectly fine.

Rinzwind
  • 299,756
Nadim Hachem
  • 177

2 Answers2

3

You will first wish to install aptitude, which is a front end to the various apt utilities.

sudo apt-get install aptitude

then

sudo aptitude install myprogram

You can aptitude search myprogram, too.

sudo aptitude update will sync your computers lists of programs available with the main servers at Ubuntu.

And sudo aptitude upgrade will download and install any new versions of programs you have already.

Those last 2 commands can be joined together to make installing all the bug fixes and new versions very easy:

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude -y upgrade

Be aware that -y option means it won't ask you for confirmation. Usually not a problem, but you never know. `

todd
  • 268
0

Apart from aptitude, already signaled in another answer, you could use apt-get:

sudo apt-get --download-only --reinstall install <package names>

The --reinstall flag is required if a package is already installed, in which case apt-get do not want to download. The downloaded packages will be found in /var/cache/apt/archives.

Another option is the following

apt-get --print-uris install <package names>

it will give web addresses of packages to download. In this case, no way to get the url of already installed packages.

To extract the urls you can do

apt-get --print-uris install <package names> |
  awk -F\' '/http/ { print $2 }'

and to directly download the packages:

wget $(apt-get --print-uris install <package names> |
  awk -F\' '/http/ { print $2 }')
enzotib
  • 93,831