nala brings ‘yum/dnf’ aesthetics to apt, with a cleaner and colorful interface.

Table of Contents

Installation

  1. To install nala you need to add a repository on your system (check GitHub page for details). 
     echo "deb http://deb.volian.org/volian/ scar main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/volian-archive-scar-unstable.list
 wget -qO - https://deb.volian.org/volian/scar.key | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/volian-archive-scar-unstable.gpg > /dev/null
  2. Then, update the repository list: 
     sudo apt update
  3. Finally, install nala. If you are using Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian Sid (“Unstable”), or any system based on these distribution versions, install nala package. For other Ubuntu/Debian based systems, install nala-legacy. 
     sudo apt install nala

If you try to install nala on incompatible systems, you’ll receive this message:

Nala

You can check if those required packages are on your system repositories (apt search <package name>).

Usage

nala is a wrapper for APT, so you can use it the same way as apt. You can update, upgrade, install, remove, etc.

sudo nala upgrade

Nala

You can see the output is similar to yum, dnf (Fedora/CentOS package managers), and more colorful. This makes it easier to check which packages will be installed/removed/upgraded. Also, installation process output is simplified and your terminal is not filled with lots of text lines.

If you have any suggestion, feel free to contact me via social media or email.