I've had no luck finding a way to search in Debian that lists versions along with names. In openSUSE, this is somewhat simple to discover, as zypper includes everything in one man page rather than having various names to learn along with separate (or not) man pages, such as apt-cache, apt-get, apt-mark, apt-file, apt-key, aptitude and dpkg. Generally my searches are seeking whether newer version is yet available. ATM, the goal is finding whether mc-4.8.17 or older can readily be replaced by the current version, mc-4.8.20. Output I would like in a form similar to what follows (from openSUSE):
# zypper se -sx firefox-esr S | Name | Type | Version | Arch | Repository ---+-------------+------------+--------------+--------+-------------- vl | firefox-esr | package | 52.5.3-1.1 | i586 | Mozilla131 vl | firefox-esr | package | 45.8.0-1.3 | i586 | MozillaLegacy vl | firefox-esr | package | 38.8.0-1.22 | i586 | MozillaLegacy vl | firefox-esr | package | 31.8.0-1.30 | i586 | MozillaLegacy vl | firefox-esr | package | 17.0.11-1.49 | i586 | MozillaLegacy vl | firefox-esr | package | 52.5.3-1.1 | i586 | Mozilla Even better would show packages sorted first by version and skipping arch. Can any similar output be provided in Debian? If yes, is there a config option to make it default? -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/