There is no apt program per se; APT is a C++ library of functions that are used by several command line programs for dealing with packages, notably apt-get and apt-cache.

There are also programs that provide a front end to APT, usually based on apt-get, like aptitude with a ncurses text interface or synaptic with a GTK+ graphical interface.

There is a central repository of over 13000 apt packages used by apt-get and derived programs to download and install applications directly from the Internet, often hailed as one of Debian's best features.

APT was originally designed to work with .deb packages on Debian systems, but it has since been modified to work with RPM packages, and to run on other operating systems such as Mac OS X.

See also

• dpkg, which APT uses to actually install and remove Debian packages
• Fink, a project to port Unix software to Mac OS X which uses APT
• List of Unix programs
• Frontends:
  • Synaptic
  • Aptitude

• Apt for RPM-based distributions
• http://www.nongnu.org/synaptic/
• Aptitude