Speed up Ubuntu apt-get downloads with apt-fast

Dexter Brylle — Fri, 15 Sep 2017 03:07:52 +0000

Intro

I've been experiencing slow download speeds on my Ubuntu VirtualBox a couple of weeks ago. Initially, I thought that my internet connection was acting up again (I have an 8 Mbps connection at home), so I did speed tests. However, tests consistent which led me to conclude that it's probably an Ubuntu mirror server thing. Half a day passed, and the connection was still a struggle so I cleaned my sources list and changed them from the mirror that my location was using to US with:

    sudo sed -i 's/http:\/\/us./http:\/\//g' /etc/apt/sources.list

apt-fast

So, speed was normal again. However, I kept thinking about the latency of downloading it from the server that I set it to. With a few Google searches, I came up with this great package that uses parallel connections to speed up downloads. It's apt-fast.

apt-fast is a shellscript wrapper for apt-get and aptitude that can drastically improve apt download times by downloading packages in parallel, with multiple connections per package.

I felt the drastic improvement! You can install it by following the set of commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/myppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install apt-fast

How to use apt-fast

You'll use apt-fast the same way you'd use apt-get or aptitude.

sudo apt-fast update
sudo apt-fast install -y <package-name>
sudo apt-fast dist-upgrade
sudo apt-fast remove

Further increase download speeds

You can add mirrors that are closest to your location for better results. Open up:

sudo vim etc/apt-fast.conf

Then add this line of code:

MIRRORS=( 'http://ftp.debian.org/debian, http://ftp2.de.debian.org/debian, http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian, ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/debian' )

You can read more about apt-fast on its Github repository.

This was originally published on my blog

Ubuntu Dev Environment setup

Dexter Brylle — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 16:00:51 +0000

I have a Macbook Pro for personal use and I already have my workflow setup. However, in my day job, I was assigned a machine running on Windows. I've made the switch to macOS since 2013 and that change kind of set me back with efficiency and productivity. So I decided to run Ubuntu 16.04 on Virtualbox.

Below are some of the tools that I use to get you up and running.

Ubuntu Dev Environment setup

Chromium

sudo apt install -y chromium-browser

Chrome

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list'

sudo apt install -y google-chrome-stable

NodeJS

v 6.x

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo -E bash -

sudo apt install -y nodejs

v 8.x

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -

sudo apt-install -y nodejs

zsh and oh-my-zsh

Install zsh

sudo apt install zsh

Install oh-my-zsh

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

You can read more about oh-my-zsh here

Fixes to set zsh/oh-my-zsh as your default

    chsh -s $(which zsh)
    ```


* You may need to logoff and login again for the changes to take effect

### Visual Studio Code

Add the repository

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | gpg --dearmor > microsoft.gpg

sudo mv microsoft.gpg /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/microsoft.gpg

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/vscode stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscode.list'




Upate cache and install vs code

sudo apt update

sudo apt install code #or code-insiders




### Sublime Text 3

wget -qO - https://download.sublimetext.com/sublimehq-pub.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

echo "deb https://download.sublimetext.com/ apt/stable/" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sublime-text.list

sudo apt update

sudo apt install sublime-text





### GitKraken

wget https://release.gitkraken.com/linux/gitkraken-amd64.tar.gz

tar -xvzf gitkraken-amd64.tar.gz

or

wget https://release.gitkraken.com/linux/gitkraken-amd64.deb

dpkg -i gitkraken-amd65.deb




### MongoChef

Download the .tar file [here](https://studio3t.com/download/)

cd ~/Downloads

tar -xvzf studio-3t-linux-x64.tar.gz

cd studio-3t-linux-x64/bin

./studio-3t.sh





### Spotify

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys BBEBDCB318AD50EC6865090613B00F1FD2C19886 0DF731E45CE24F27EEEB1450EFDC8610341D9410

echo deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spotify.list

sudo apt update

sudo apt install y- spotify-client




I hope this may serve as a reference to people/devs with a fresh install of Ubuntu.

Thanks!

DEV Community: Dexter Brylle

Speed up Ubuntu apt-get downloads with apt-fast

Intro

apt-fast

How to use apt-fast

Further increase download speeds

Ubuntu Dev Environment setup

Ubuntu Dev Environment setup

Chromium

Chrome

NodeJS

zsh and oh-my-zsh