Help-on-using-aptitude

Aptitude is a command line packet manager. It is more than apt-get, you can also search and view status of packages.

Installing packages:

aptitude install package-name

Searching for packages:

aptitude search keyword

Viewing package details:

aptitude show package-name

The "state" flag displayed for a package has the following possible values:
v - virtual
B - broken
u - "unpacked"
C - half-configured
H - half-installed
c - removed, but config-files still present (ie, not purged)
i - installed
E - internal error (should not happen)

The "action" flag displayed for a package has the following possible values:
h - hold
p - purge
d - delete (remove)
B - broken
i - install
r - reinstall
u - upgrade
F - the available upgrade has been forbidden via "F"