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.
| Updates only already installed package and its dependencies. The `apt install` works for both install and upgrade single package if already installed.
| 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`.
| 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 Linux 34 to 35. This is a multi-step process as described xref:dnf-system-upgrade.adoc[here].
With the exceptions of the distribution upgrade working differently, and DNF updating the cache automatically, the commands are very similar. More info on DNF can be found xref:dnf.adoc[here].
The `apt` command on Fedora used to -- until https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Move_apt_package_from_RPM_to_DPKG_backend[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, and 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.
