People say that aptitude on Debian is so much better than apt-get, but I find it less usable. (See examples below.) Is there any configuration magic for aptitude to get rid of those useless status messages?
» aptitude install foo Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... Reading extended state information... Initializing package states... Writing extended state information... Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "foo" Couldn't find any package whose name or description matched "foo" No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed. 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used. Writing extended state information... Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... Reading extended state information... Initializing package states...
Compare:
» apt-get install foo Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... E: Couldn't find package foo
Best Answer
You can configure the quietness of aptitude (and apt-get) by putting a line such as:
at the beginning or end of
/etc/apt/apt.conf.