APT Interface 'Revamped' For Ubuntu 24.10 and Debian Trixie with Colors and Columns

Ubuntu 24.10 [expected this October] and Debian GNU/Linux 13 "Trixie" [expected June-July 2025] "will feature a refined APT command-line interface," reports 9to5Linux: APT developer and Canonical engineer Julian Andres Klode took to LinkedIn to present the revamped APT interface powered by the upcoming APT 3.0 package manager that looks to give users a more concise and well-laid-out command-line output when updating, installing, or removing packages via the terminal emulator.

The new APT 3.0 UI brings a columnar display that will make it easier for users to quickly scan for a package name, support for colors (red for removals and green for other changes), which makes it easier to quickly distinguish commands at a glance, and smoother install progress bars using Unicode blocks.

In addition, the new APT 3.0 command-line interface will be less verbose and offer more padding to make it easier to separate sections and extract the relevant information for you.
"Bleeding-edge users and Linux enthusiasts who want to try this right now can check out Debian Unstable..."

XZ

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Linux enthusiasts who want to try this right now can check out Debian Unstable...

I think a lot of Linux users will wait a bit to get the bleeding edge [wikipedia.org] from now on...

Re:

[F.Ultra]

the libxz backdoor was something the perpetrators had been working on for over 2 years to infiltrate RPM and DEB (the backdoor was only activated if a rpm or a deb was being built) distributions so bleeding edge or LTS style doesn't matter one bit here.

Re:

[antdude]

I just use Debian's stable and oldstable. :)

Snap

[ArchieBunker]

Want to bet on this being a snap package and not a regular binary?

Re:

[Pieroxy]

I wasn't aware that snap made it to Debian ....

apt-get

[TheDarkener]

My hope is that this doesn't make its way into apt-get. Nobody likes eye-candy in favor of breaking compatibility with existing scripts and decades old infrastructure that 'just works' as we all appreciate with *nix.

Re:apt-get

[godrik]

apt has been providing warnings for a long long time to tell you not to parse its output:

  0$ apt search foo | grep bar

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

lemonbar/jammy 1.4-1 amd64
    lightweight bar based on XCB
libargtable2-0/jammy 13-1.1 amd64
libargtable2-dev/jammy 13-1.1 amd64
libargtable2-docs/jammy,jammy 13-1.1 all
libart-2.0-2/jammy 2.3.21-4 amd64
libart-2.0-dev/jammy 2.3.21-4 amd64
    Expand {foo,bar,baz}[2-4] style string globs
    Defines Foo.call(*args) which invokes Foo.new(*args).bar

Re:

[fph il quozientatore]

That's not what that warning means. "Does not have a stable CLI interface" means that the _input_ format may change (the stuff you put into argv[]), not the _output_.

Re:

[bjwest]

That's not what that warning means. "Does not have a stable CLI interface" means that the _input_ format may change (the stuff you put into argv[]), not the _output_.

Perhaps your definition of CLI interface only includes the input into the application, but I believe the application's output is also part of the CLI interface.

Re:

[F.Ultra]

no it refers specifically to the output, hence the "use with caution in scripts."

Re:apt-get

[giuntag]

My understanding is that a large part of the reason `apt` was developed was to allow breaking the output format without impacting the scripts consuming it, whereas `apt-get` is more or less frozen in time

Re:

[jaklode]

It's sort of all, input, output and behavior, to give examples:

Behavior: apt deletes packages after it is done installing them, whereas apt-get doesn't
Input: apt-get accepts both regular expressions and glob expressions for package names, and it doesn't anchor the regular expressions, so if there is e.g. no package "apt." and you "install apt." it matches every package containing the substring "apt" and another character following it. apt was made safer to only accept regular expressions starting with ^ or

Re:

[Kubiekdriehoekje]

apt != apt-get

Re:

[TheDarkener]

You are correct...hence my comment:

"My hope is that this doesn't make its way into apt-get."

Re:

[F.Ultra]

it won't, apt-get has a stable output format to support scripting, apt does not.

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

For me it's a different thing, I couldn't care less about eye-candy, what I want apt to fix is (1) "some packages have been held back because we felt like it, no updates for you", and (2) the giant clusterfuck that is its key management, "some key you've never heard of can't be found/is untrusted/has expired, no more updates for you, ever". And none of the hacks and workarounds posted to screeds of forums where people have had the same problem work, you just end up with a system that can't be updated any m

Re:

[jaklode]

We have to think about apt-*s future in about 3-4 years. With apt(8) now getting versioned output you can get the same "scripting interface stability" of 5 years as for APT's ABI (and mostly API) you will just need to request it. But really either interface is not made for scripting.

Turning off colours

[computer_tot]

I hope there is an easy way to disable the colours in the output. That dark red on black text is pretty hard to read. The dark green on black isn't much better. This is a rare case where the "before" version looks a lot better than the "after" in terms of readability. I like the structure of the new APT, the organization of the output looks nice. But the colour combination is poor.

Re:Turning off colours

[bill_mcgonigle]

I asked the developer to have some way for red/green colorblind people (9% of males, probably 8% of sysadmins) to be able to change the colors.

Re:

[jaklode]

For what it's worth, don't let the image confuse you, it may look totally different on your screen, there is only "green" and no shades of it in the basic ANSI colors. i.e. if I set the palette to xterm, it's almost neon, very shrill. Same for the red. I like more muted colors on my screen, hence I use the Tango palette.

But of course you can reconfigure each color by name (apt::color::green, etc.) to your liking if you don't configure it centrally in your terminal or want different colors than for e.g. git

As always

[dlarge6510]

> support for colors (red for removals and green for other changes), which makes it easier to quickly distinguish commands at a glance

For some...

Re:

[jaklode]

So assuming you have green/red deficiency you don't reconfigure the 7 colors in your terminal palette to preserve the distinction?

Re:

[dlarge6510]

Yes I'm deutan-anomalous (green anomaly) although I also test as having a slight red anomaly as well so tests sometimes think I'm a protan. My left eye is better than my right.

I try to avoid colour as much as possible. It looks nice and that’s it. It rarely can convey meaning to me, even if I can see the colour I grew up not caring what that colour was. I guess I was too fed up with constantly being corrected I got to the point that I just used what colours looked best, who cares if wood isn’t

Re:

[jaklode]

I understand your concern but I want to point out that red/green here resembles the colors you normally use for a diff; as the solution is a diff for your package. That's why red and green are sadly the natural choices because somebody picked that decades ago.

For colorless systems, there's emphasis on dangerous actions due to their heading being all uppercase. It's not particularly good emphasis, but it's better than before when the upper case was inside a longer sentence (people actually complain about see

Re:

[jaklode]

I want to add that adding color was essentially the last step in the redesign. It does not play an important role overall, it literally can't.

You'll find if you look at the posts in https://mastodon.social/@julia... [mastodon.social] from 11th/12th that the color landed fairly close to the end of the first round per request to make it look more like a diff.

The evolution was:
1. 10:36 PM initial terse UI proof of concept: use less words (https://mastodon.social/@juliank/112254503514992757)
2. 10:51 PM add spaces and hide the pr