apt for apt-get

As the front end for dpkg, the venerable package manager for Debian and its derivatives, apt-get has been expanded with dozens of utilities over the years, becoming bewildering for new users. As a response to this expansion, apt simplifies apt-get's basic commands while including the most useful options from utilities such as apt-cache and apt-query (Figure 5). In addition, forthcoming versions of apt will allow editing of package sources. Once the command is entered, then feedback is the same as for apt-get. The result is so convenient that even long-time Debian users have taken to using apt.

Figure 5: A simplification of apt-get, apt covers the most common uses.

dnf for yum

Traditionally, yum has functioned as the package manager for RPM packages. Unfortunately, API documentation and expertise have long been lacking in yum, making bug fixing and improvements difficult. For this reason, dnf has been slowly replacing yum in the past few years (Figure 6). In addition to being a complete replacement, dnf allows extensions in several programming languages and has faster dependency resolution than yum. Also, dnf has abilities that yum lacks, such as the ability to switch repositories if needed or to delete old kernels. In general, dnf is much quicker than yum and flexible enough to skip unnecessary steps to speed up installation. For instance, if you have just installed one package, dnf will not update the package list for a second one.

Figure 6: For distros that use RPM packages, dnf is well on its way to replacing yum.

htop for top

To display applications that use the most memory or take up the most RAM on a system, top has been the classic choice. Installed by default on Linux systems, top displays only plain text – which is not surprising, considering it was developed in 1984. By contrast, htop (Figure 7), developed in 2004, uses color to make reading easier. Unlike top, htop supports horizontal and vertical scrolling, as well as searching and the use of a mouse. These features make replacing top with htop a no brainer for system administrators.

Figure 7: As a replacement for top, htop offers improved readability of data.