How To Install appstream on Ubuntu 20.04

In this tutorial we learn how to install appstream on Ubuntu 20.04. appstream is Software component metadata management

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install appstream on Ubuntu 20.04.

What is appstream

appstream is:

AppStream is a metadata specification, allowing to write metadata for software projects in a standardized format. It provides facilities to easily access and transform the data, as well as a few additional services to allow building feature-rich software center applications.

This package provides tools to generate, maintain and query the AppStream data pool of installed and available software, and enables integration with the APT package manager.

The ‘appstreamcli’ tool can be used for accessing the software component pool as well as for working with AppStream metadata directly, including validating it for compliance with the specification. Task: ubuntu-desktop-minimal, ubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-desktop, xubuntu-desktop, lubuntu-desktop, ubuntustudio-desktop, ubuntu-budgie-desktop

There are three methods to install appstream on Ubuntu 20.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install appstream Using apt-get

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

sudo apt-get update

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

sudo apt-get -y install appstream

Install appstream Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install appstream using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install appstream

Install appstream 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 Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

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

sudo aptitude -y install appstream

How To Uninstall appstream on Ubuntu 20.04

To uninstall only the appstream package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove appstream

Uninstall appstream And Its Dependencies

To uninstall appstream and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 20.04, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove appstream

Remove appstream Configurations and Data

To remove appstream configuration and data from Ubuntu 20.04 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge appstream

Remove appstream configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

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

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge appstream

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install appstream package on Ubuntu 20.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.