How to find out package details of an application in Ubuntu 14.04

Do you want to know how to find out package name of an application?. It is easy to install or remove any software in Ubuntu, but what about the exact package name and details of that software which you want to install and uninstall??. Basically, for this purpose you have to use APT (Advance packaging tool) which is a package management system used by Debian based Linux Operating system.

APT used “apt-cache” to maintain the database of these packages so that you can easily view and check the exact package details. Just have a glance at this article to find out how to find out package name of an application in Ubuntu.

Steps to find out package details of an application:

Step 1: First open your Ubuntu terminal by using “Ctrl + ALT+T” key combination and then type: “apt-cache pkgnames | less “. This command is used to list all the packages installed on the system.

Step 2: Here, you can see a list of all the packages installed on your system as shown in the image below. (Note: You can use arrow to view all the packages)

Step 3: Now, type: “apt-cache pkgnames fire”, this command provides you the list of all package names starting with the word fire.

Step 4: If you want to show the details of a particular package, then type: “apt-cache show package_name”( for e.g., ‘apt-cache show firefox’)

Step 5: You’ll see full details of the package which you’ve searched.

Step 6: Type: “apt-cache showpkg firefox”, in order to find exact package details. This command is used to find out the dependencies and reverse dependencies for a package.

Step 7: Now, type: “apt-cache stats” to show the overall statistics of the package cache that you’ve searched.

Step 8: You can also search particular package description such as name and their associates packages by using “apt-cache search gnome mines”.