Table of Contents
Nala is a front-end for libapt-pkg. Specifically we interface using the python-apt api.
Especially for newer users it can be hard to understand what apt is trying to do when installing or upgrading.
We aim to solve this by not showing some redundant messages, formatting the packages better, and using color to show specifically what will happen with a package during install, removal, or an upgrade.
Outside of pretty formatting, the number 1 reason to use Nala over apt is parallel downloads.
By default we will download 3 packages per unique mirror in your sources.list file.
Opening multiple connections to the same mirror is great for speeding up downloading many small packages. We have the 3 connections per mirror limit to minimize how hard we are hitting mirrors.
Additionally we alternate downloads between the available mirrors to improve download speeds even further. If a mirror fails for whatever reason, we just try the next until all defined mirrors are exhausted.
Note: Nala does not use APT for package downloading and verification
Which brings us to our next standout feature, nala fetch.
This command works similar to how most people use netselect and netselect-apt.
nala fetch will check if your distro is either Debian or Ubuntu.
Nala will then go get all the mirrors from the respective master list.
Once done we test the latency and score each mirror.
Nala will choose the fastest 3 mirrors (configurable) and write them to a file.
At the moment fetch will only work on Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives still tied to the main repos. Such as Pop!_OS
Our last big feature is the nala history command.
If you're familiar with dnf this works much in the same way.
Each Install, Remove or Upgrade we store in /var/lib/nala/history.json with a unique <ID> number.
At any time you can call nala history to print a summary of every transaction ever made.
You can then further manipulate this with commands such as nala history undo <ID> or nala history redo <ID>.
If there is something in the history file that you don't want you can use the nala history clear <ID> It will remove that entry.
Alternatively for the clear command we accept --all which will remove the entire history.
Volian Scar Repo
Install the Volian Scar repo.
echo "deb http://deb.volian.org/volian/ scar main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/volian-archive-scar-unstable.list
wget -qO - https://deb.volian.org/volian/scar.key | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/volian-archive-scar-unstable.gpg > /dev/nullIf you want to add the source repo.
echo "deb-src http://deb.volian.org/volian/ scar main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/volian-archive-scar-unstable.listFor Ubuntu 22.04 / Debian Sid and newer.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install nalaFor older distributions like Ubuntu 21.04 / Debian Stable and older.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install nala-legacyPacstall
Alternatively, we maintain a pacscript for Pacstall.
If you don't already, install Pacstall.
Once that is complete all you have to do is run the following command.
pacstall -I nala-debDebian Package
You can also choose to download our .deb and install it locally through apt or dpkg.
To download the package you can head over to our Releases page.
From there you can use one of the two commands below to install nala.
sudo apt install /path/to/nala_version_arch.debOr
sudo dpkg -i /path/to/nala_version_arch.deb
sudo apt install -fThere isn't a documentation site setup at the moment, but our man page explains things well enough for now.
Nala's bash, Zsh and fish completions are now handled with typer.
There is nothing you need to do but install Nala and restart your shell for them to work
Nala is mirrored to several sites such as GitHub and even Debian Salsa.
The official repository is https://gitlab.com/volian/nala
We ask that you please go here to report a bug or request a feature.
The other repositories are official, but just mirrors of what is on GitLab.
If you would like to support the project you can donate at the link below.