How To Install lf on Debian 12

Learn how to install lf on Debian 12 with this tutorial. lf is terminal file manager written in Go

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install lf on Debian 12.

What is lf

lf is:

lf (as in “list files”) is a terminal file manager written in Go. It is heavily inspired by ranger with some missing and extra features. Some of the missing features are deliberately omitted since they are better handled by external tools.

Features:

  • Single binary without any runtime dependencies (except terminfo database)
  • Fast startup and low memory footprint
  • Server/client architecture to share file selection between multiple instances
  • Configuration with shell commands
  • Customizable keybindings (vi and readline defaults)
  • Preview filtering (for source highlighting, archives, PDFs/images as text)

There are three methods to install lf on Debian 12. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install lf Using apt-get

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

sudo apt-get update

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

sudo apt-get -y install lf

Install lf Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

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

sudo apt -y install lf

Install lf 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 lf using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install lf

How To Uninstall lf on Debian 12

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

sudo apt-get remove lf

Uninstall lf And Its Dependencies

To uninstall lf and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 12, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove lf

Remove lf Configurations and Data

To remove lf configuration and data from Debian 12 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge lf

Remove lf configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

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

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge lf

Dependencies

lf have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install lf package on Debian 12 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.