How To Install pulseaudio-utils on Debian 9

In this tutorial we learn how to install pulseaudio-utils on Debian 9. pulseaudio-utils is Command line tools for the PulseAudio sound server

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install pulseaudio-utils on Debian 9.

What is pulseaudio-utils

pulseaudio-utils is:

PulseAudio, previously known as Polypaudio, is a sound server for POSIX and WIN32 systems. It is a drop in replacement for the ESD sound server with much better latency, mixing/re-sampling quality and overall architecture.

These tools provide command line access to various features of the PulseAudio sound server. Included tools are:

paplay - Playback a WAV file via a PulseAudio sink. pacat - Cat raw audio data to a PulseAudio sink. parec - Cat raw audio data from a PulseAudio source. pacmd - Connect to PulseAudio’s built-in command line control interface. pactl - Send a control command to a PulseAudio server. padsp - /dev/dsp wrapper to transparently support OSS applications. pax11publish - Store/retrieve PulseAudio default server/sink/source settings in the X11 root window.

There are three methods to install pulseaudio-utils on Debian 9. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install pulseaudio-utils Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install pulseaudio-utils using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install pulseaudio-utils

Install pulseaudio-utils Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install pulseaudio-utils using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install pulseaudio-utils

Install pulseaudio-utils Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install pulseaudio-utils using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install pulseaudio-utils

How To Uninstall pulseaudio-utils on Debian 9

To uninstall only the pulseaudio-utils package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio-utils

Uninstall pulseaudio-utils And Its Dependencies

To uninstall pulseaudio-utils and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 9, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove pulseaudio-utils

Remove pulseaudio-utils Configurations and Data

To remove pulseaudio-utils configuration and data from Debian 9 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge pulseaudio-utils

Remove pulseaudio-utils configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove pulseaudio-utils configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge pulseaudio-utils

Dependencies

pulseaudio-utils have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install pulseaudio-utils package on Debian 9 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.