Nala is a Neat Alternative to Apt on Ubuntu

If there’s one command-line tool I know most of you use it’s APT, or the Advanced Package Tool.

Every Debian-based Linux distro (Ubuntu included) uses APT because, well, it’s good at what it does.

To quote Wikipedia, APT takes the hassle out of managing software on Linux by “automating the retrieval, configuration and installation of software packages, either from precompiled files or by compiling source code.”

If you want to check for updates, upgrade your system, or install software from your distro’s repo, them humble apt allows you to — quickly, easily, and relatively safely.

But I’m not here to talk about why you should use APT 😉.

Nala on Ubuntu? Pretty & Awesome

Nala is a free, open source alternative front-end to APT (which itself is something of a front-end to dpkg). Nala does (almost) everything APT does (which you’d hope given it’s just a front-end to it) plus it can do a bit more.

“More?”, you enquire, Oliver Twist style.

Yes, more.

For instance, Nala also supports:

• Parallel downloads to speed up install/update/upgrade
• Interactive history to learn more about recent installs and undo them
• Fastest mirror tool to find the 3 fastest mirrors to fetch updates from

But the number one reason why people use Nala as an APT replacement?

Because of how it looks.

Nala: Apt, But Prettier

Let’s take regular apt, and run the sort of command most of us have typed tens of thousands of times: a simple apt install for the Bpytop package.

I run the command, APT reads its list of packages, detects and lists any dependencies, mentions any suggested packages that might be of interest (rarely are), and rounds it off by confirming the list of NEW packages to be installed.

I hit y to proceed and —Whoooooosh! A stream of text storms by as the packager manager sets about downloading, unpacking, and installing everything it’s been asked to:

This perfectly fine experience will be familiar to almost anyone that has used Ubuntu at almost any point since its creation (I say ‘almost’ as the command was changed from apt-get to apt a while back, but it’s a minor point).

Now I repeat the same task but this time using Nala and running sudo nala install bpytop to install the Bpytop package:

Can you see the difference in presentation?

Instead of a cramped cluster of text Nala lets the info breathe. It uses line breaks and spacing. It uses colour. It gives structure. It has dividers and headings and subheadings. It uses progress bars. It uses animation.

Heck, it gives me the chance to actually understand what is happening on the screen.

Anyone uncomfortable at the command line would —no stats to back the assertion up, mind— find Nala’s presentation the more human-readable, parsable, ordered, and reassuring of the two.

Plus, as I mentioned, nala is compatible with most of the apt commands we’re all familiar with. To run them just replace apt with nala, e.g, sudo nala update.

And Nala‘s extra features I touched on? Run nala --help to discover them — but here’s a short rundown of my favourites:

• sudo nala fetch – find fastest mirrors
• nala history – see recently run nala commands
• nala history info – see more details about a history event

Not every APT command works in Nala.

You can’t run an nala dist-upgrade or nala full-upgrade, or view critical bugs using nala-listbugs. There are likely more omissions so my tip is this: try anyway. If it’s supported, it’ll work, if it’s not, just use apt for that particular task.

How to Install Nala on Ubuntu

Need further persuading as to why using Nala on Ubuntu is a grade-A good idea? How about this: it’s super easy to install and you can install it and use it alongside APT — no, you don’t need to replace or remove anything to give it a try.

On Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or above run this command to install Nala from the Ubuntu repo:

sudo apt install nala

If you use Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or earlier you will have to mosey over to official Nala wiki. There you can learn the recommended way to install it on your version of Ubuntu, or a different Linux distro entirely.

And that’s it.

All you need to do now is try to fight your muscle memory as you’ll keep instinctively typing sudo apt foo instead of sudo nala foo.

Summary

I’ve shared with you the reasons why I use Nala instead of APT on my Ubuntu installs. Nala is a fantastic drop-in alternative to APT, but not a replacement. Use it all the time or use it some of the time — just try it out and let me know what you think!