APT commands on Fedora

APT is the package manager/dependency solver for the Debian ecosystem, i.e. it manages .deb packages installed by the DPKG program. Fedora software is based on .rpm packages, and thus uses DNF, the package manager/dependency solver for the RPM program, instead. This document gives a brief overview of the most common APT commands one might find in tutorials and their DNF equivalents.

APT vs. DNF commands

Table 1. Apt vs DNF commands
APT command	DNF command	notes
`apt update` `apt-get update`	`dnf check-update`	This command is rarely needed, as dnf updates its package cache automatically when it is stale. A cache update can be forced by appending `--refresh` to other commands, e.g. `dnf upgrade --refresh`
`apt upgrade` `apt-get upgrade`	`dnf upgrade`
`apt full-upgrade` `apt-get dist-upgrade`	`dnf distro-sync` or `dnf system-upgrade` (see note)	While `distro-sync` is the most direct functional equivalent, `dnf system-upgrade` should be used to upgrade from one release to another, e.g. from Fedora 31 to 32. This is a multi-step process as described here.
`apt remove` `apt-get remove`	`dnf remove`
`apt purge` `apt-get purge`	---
`apt autoremove` `apt-get autoremove`	`dnf autoremove`
`apt search` `apt-cache search`	`dnf search`

With the exception of the distribution upgrade working differently and DNF updating the cache automatically, the commands are very similar. More info on DNF can be found here.

Why is APT in the Fedora repositories?

APT can not be used to install packages on Fedora, you have to use DNF instead.

The apt command on Fedora used to - until Fedora 32 - actually be APT-RPM, which basically mapped normal apt commands so that they worked with Fedora’s RPM package management system.

However, APT-RPM is unmaintained, broken & insecure, and so was dropped in favour of shipping the actual Debian APT software. Since APT exclusively deals with .deb packages, the apt command can no longer be used to manage Fedora packages. Its purpose is now purely as a tool for people building packages for Debian-based distributions on a Fedora system.