Today is a big day for the Debian and Ubuntu software ecosystems; the APT team has officially unveiled APT 3.0 to the package manager beloved by millions, marking the beginning of a brand-new stable series dedicated to Steve Langasek, longtime Debian and Ubuntu contributor, who passed away on Jan 1, 2025.
The changes are many. To begin with, APT 3.0 incorporates an impressive collection of translation updates for Dutch, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Swedish, Czech, and Polish, making the tool more accessible.
Furthermore, documentation and manpages in these languages have received much-needed improvements, supporting users who rely heavily on local-language resources.
On the technical front, APT 3.0 includes the finalized version of the so-called “solver3,” a full backtracking solver that promises enhanced conflict resolution. In previous incremental releases, the solver underwent intensive performance optimizations—ranging from improved version selection methods to sophisticated clause management.
Now, thanks to incremental discovery and persistent clause storage, the solver can fall back gracefully whenever it detects tricky corner cases. Also noteworthy is APT’s ability to manage phased updates, a feature particularly beneficial for rolling out major upgrades in a controlled fashion.
Moreover, the user interface has been given a facelift to streamline interactions and deliver more intuitive feedback. The new columnar output provides a neatly organized display—think of it like the difference between a neatly aligned spreadsheet and a jumbled text file.
Color-coded messages and bold highlights help users spot important notifications, warnings, or conflicts right away. For instance, essential package removals now appear in red, while newly installed packages are bolded for quick identification.
Additionally, the improved handling of Recommends and Suggests means that APT can highlight optional but beneficial packages even during an upgrade, adding a layer of user-friendliness that was once missing.
Another major improvement stems from the continued focus on cryptographic robustness. The maintainers have made strides in replacing older GnuTLS and GnuPG components with OpenSSL and Sequoia-based methods, ensuring more secure package verification.
This transition reduces reliance on deprecated tools and simplifies debugging and key management, especially since apt-key has been officially phased out in favor of stronger, more modern authentication methods.
The APT 3.0 package manager has now been accepted into Debian’s unstable branch and is expected to enter the testing branch soon. That’s where development for the upcoming Debian 13 “Trixie” release (expected to launch around mid-year) is happening, which is currently in the Transition and Toolchain Freeze phase.
For more information, see the changelog.
