There doesn't seem to be anything that jumps out as a reason to use aptitude over apt-get there. It mentions that the defaults for upgrading the distro are better for aptitude but doesn't say why or what differences there are.
I can see the search being useful though.
Seeing as my muscle memory is set at apt-get, i'll stick with it for the moment.
There was a brief time when aptitude was smarter than apt-get (it was smart enough to remove auto-installed dependencies when you removed a package, for example). During that time, the advice was to use aptitude instead of apt-get.
Those smarts were later moved to apt itself, but it's still a part of the folklore.
Comments
This is not Ubuntu.
Better use 'aptitude':
Huh? I've been using apt-get on Debian since it was first released (in 1998).
Why is it better to use aptitude on debian?
I've been using debian for years and always just used apt-get.
For a start, aptitudes command line options are less confusing and more powerful.
Furthermore:
http://superuser.com/questions/93437/aptitude-vs-apt-get-whi...
There doesn't seem to be anything that jumps out as a reason to use aptitude over apt-get there. It mentions that the defaults for upgrading the distro are better for aptitude but doesn't say why or what differences there are.
I can see the search being useful though.
Seeing as my muscle memory is set at apt-get, i'll stick with it for the moment.
There was a brief time when aptitude was smarter than apt-get (it was smart enough to remove auto-installed dependencies when you removed a package, for example). During that time, the advice was to use aptitude instead of apt-get.
Those smarts were later moved to apt itself, but it's still a part of the folklore.
There isn't any specific reason, really. It's a matter of preference, and they can be used interchangeably (which wasn't always the case) nowadays.