On Tue, May 28, 2024 at 01:00:24PM -0400, Michael Grant wrote: > So once I've done this dpkg -i to install a package, I can do that > without removing the old one first?
Yes, dpkg will upgrade or downgrade the existing package. > And, once I've hammered a package into place with dpkg, in the future, > will apt take it into account as a dependency of things already > installed even though apt itself didn't install or rather downgrade > the package itself? Yes. Dpkg is the lower level tool. Apt is the higher level tool. The set of installed packages is tracked by dpkg (it's in the file /var/lib/dpkg/status which you can read if you like). Apt calls dpkg to do all of the installing, removing, etc. Apt just calculates the dependency tree and downloads the .deb files for dpkg to use.
