Synaptic is a graphical package management program for apt. It provides the same features as the apt-get command line utility with a GUI front-end based on Gtk+.

Features

(as of version 0.56)

Install, remove, upgrade and downgrade single and multiple packages.
Upgrade your whole system.
Manage package repositories (sources.list).
Find packages by name, description and several other attributes.
Select packages by status, section, name or a custom filter.
Sort packages by name, status, size or version.
Browse all available online documentation related to a package.
Download the latest changelog of a package.
Lock packages to the current version.
Force the installation of a specifc package version.
Undo/Redo of selections.
Built-in terminal emulator for the package manager.
Debian only: Configure packages through the debconf system.

Download

Source code and Debian binaries:
Savannah.nongnu.org project page.

Debian packages:
can be found in unstable and testing, add either one to your sources and do apt-get install synaptic.
See the Debian package page.

Latest version (bzr): Synaptic uses the bazaar-ng version control system (bzr), which is available at:
bzr at people.ubuntu.com.

Changelog

The changelog for the latest stable release can be found inside the synaptic source dir in the file NEWS. You can also view it in the subversion repository NEWS file.

Building synaptic

To compile you will need Gtk+ 2.4 (or later) There is optional support for output into libzvt (part of gnome-libs).