Can I use other tool than Ubuntu Software Center to open apt links?

• Neither gDebi, Synaptic or Lubuntu Software Center support handling the "apt://" protocol/links.

• But a very simple graphical apt-get-type installer called AptURL does.

  • Install it with sudo apt-get install apturl
  • Set Firefox Preferences to "Always Ask" for apt
  • Click on a link, and select AptURL:

  

  • And the window will pop open:

  

  • Installation will take place using a lightweight gDebi-style frontend

• The other option is to use a custom script such as green7's answer

• But to be browser-independent, what you really need is:

  1. A .desktop file for your script/application, indicating that it handles the x-scheme-handler/apt protocol (see MimeType= lines in aptURL.desktop, ubuntu-software-center.desktop)
  2. And you can set the default by modifying the defaults.list file in /usr/share/applications/

You can change the Action in Preferences > Applications from Ubuntu Software Center to this simple shell script.

#! /bin/bash

toInstall="$@"
toInstall=${toInstall#*:}
lxterm -e "sudo apt-get install $toInstall; read"

Save this to some file, say aptFirefox.sh, and make it executable by running:

chmod +x /path/to/aptFirefox.sh

Now you can replace Ubuntu Software Center with aptFirefox.sh.

Now whenever you click on any apt link, it will show a terminal window asking for your password.

After you correctly enter your password, it will install the package.

Note that you can use xterm in place of lxterm.