Arch User Repository or, simply, the AUR is one of the many reasons why people choose Arch Linux or its derivative distributions such as Manjaro or EndeavourOS. If you use an AUR helper on any Arch-based distribution, you do not ever have to install anything manually from GitHub ever again. And although Debian and Ubuntu use the apt package manager, which is one of the oldest package managers, a feature like AUR is still absent in Debian and Ubuntu.
Pacstall attempts to fill this gap for Debian and Ubuntu-based systems by acting as a third-party AUR. In this article, we will take a look at the installation procedure of this tool on any Ubuntu-based distribution, and we will also see how to install, remove and search packages with this tool.
Features of Pacstall
- It supports installing AppImage, binaries, building applications from sources as well as installing deb packages.
- Using Axel, you can accelerate the package download speeds.
- You also have the option to install an application from different repositories.
- You don’t even have to wait for the developer to push a new release in order to get a new update of this package, as this tool builds one from the
git pushes
. - Bash, Zsh, and Fish shell users do not have to type in the full commands every time as this supports shell completion.
Installing Pacstall
The installation process is really simple, just open a terminal window and type the following commands :
sudo bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://git.io/JsADh || wget -q https://git.io/JsADh -O -)"

And that is it, This ‘AUR helper’ is now installed, and we can start using it on our Machine.
Basic Commands
Let’s search for a package named ‘vim’, to do this, you can type the following commands :
pacstall -S vim

Now, to install a package, use the following command :
pacstall -I vim

To add a custom repository, you can run the following commands :
pacstall -A REPOSITORY_NAME
In order to update the Pacstall scripts, you can run the following command :
pacstall -U

To update all the packages, you can run:
pacstall -Up
In order to list more command options supported by this package, you can open its help menu:
pacstall -h

Summary
It is really cool to see that independent developers are filling the gap which we all felt whenever we used any Debian/Ubuntu-based distribution. Let’s hope that this package is regularly maintained and supported by the community. If you have a habit of always running apt install
and apt update
, then perhaps you can make an alias for this command in your Bashrc so that you do not have to remember new commands for installing a package.