How to install suggested packages in apt-get
suggests and recommends are not the same thing.
Package A depends on Package B if B absolutely must be installed in order to run A. In some cases, A depends not only on B, but on a version of B. In this case, the version dependency is usually a lower limit, in the sense that A depends on any version of B more recent than some specified version.
Package A recommends Package B, if the package maintainer judges that most users would not want A without also having the functionality provided by B.
Package A suggests Package B if B contains files that are related to (and usually enhance) the functionality of A.
See The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ for details.
By default, apt-get
installs recommended packages.
Your option --install-suggests
adds in the suggested packages and their suggested dependencies.
--install-suggests
Consider suggested packages as a dependency for installing.
Configuration Item: APT::Install-Suggests.
see apt-get
(8).
I found out why the recommended packages in my question were not included in the packages to be installed. It's because those recommended packages do not exist in the repositories. I tried to install a random package, I chose sudo apt-get install googleearth-package
. It did not show the Recommended packages section (which means they are already included in the NEW packages to be installed section). To confirm this, I ran sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install googleearth-package
, and surely enough the Recommended packages section revealed itself. As for the suggested packages, I guess I won't be using --install-suggests
because that just installs the suggested packages and their suggested packages.