In LibraZiK-4 GNU-linux, a “package” is a set of files compressed into one that contains software, data, configuration files, etc. The package management allows you to install and/or remove software. Packages are files with the extension .deb.

With LibraZiK-4, the recommended software for managing your packages is called Synaptic.

Synaptic is the package manager of choice for your LibraZiK-4 system. It is through this software that you will install all the other software you will need on your system. With very few exceptions, which will be mentioned in the documentation when necessary, it is and only it that takes care of the installation, the update, and the uninstallation of your software.

If you are coming from another operating system and you are used to downloading software from different sites, you will have to break this habit. Indeed, with LibraZiK-4 ¹⁾, software installation is centralized with repositories, and these repositories are accessible through specialized tools: “dpkg” and “apt”, and Synaptic which is a graphical interface of these.

See the tutorial : Installing a software.

It is recommended to keep your system up to date. If you are coming from another operating system, you will certainly find it relaxing that all software updates are centralized with Synaptic and that you can keep your system up to date with just a few clicks.

LibraZiK-4 does not provide an automatic update alert system. So you will have to think about launching the update operation by yourself regularly.

See the tutorial: Update your software.

LibraZiK-4 is made of 2 types of repositories: the Debian stable (Bullseye) repositories and the LibraZiK-4 ones. We will see here what each of them is used for. These repositories work for 64-bit installations as well as for 32-bit installations.

You will find them for example in : menu Synaptic → Settings → Repositories :

These different repositories constitute the set of repositories used by LibraZiK-4 of which here is an explanation:

In LibraZiK-4, there are 3 different categories of packages: “main”, “contrib” and “non-free” for each repository. For more information about the different categories, please refer to the official page at Debian. LibraZiK-4 follows the same principle.

See the tutorial : Modify the categories taken into account for a repository.

When you remove software, the difference between Mark for removal and Mark for complete removal is that the latter also deletes the general configuration files (not the user configuration files). This operation is also known under the “purge” name.

The user configuration files are then not deleted by Synaptic and you will have to delete them “by hand” if you wish. To do this, you can look in the pages dedicated to each software in the paragraph “Configuration file” where you will be indicated the location of the said user configuration files that you can delete with your file browser Caja or with a terminal.

Note that, in the case of a software malfunction, it may be useful to move or rename these user configuration files or directory(ies) to allow the software to reset itself. This often fixes a problem with the software's behavior or, at least, confirms/denies that the problem is with the configuration files. If this fixes a problem, then you can delete the old user configuration files/directories if you wish.

So much for the basics of package management on LibraZiK-4 which will allow you to perform the essential operations of installing, updating, or removing packages (and therefore software).

You may want to check out some more advanced tutorials about using Synaptic later on.