Not much. apt is a new command that supposed to merge several functions from apt-get and apt-cache into one command. It's still a little rough around the edges but here's the command listing from --help :

Basic commands: list - list packages based on package names search - search in package descriptions show - show package details update - update list of available packages install - install packages remove - remove packages upgrade - upgrade the system by installing/upgrading packages full-upgrade - upgrade the system by removing/installing/upgrading packages edit-sources - edit the source information file

The equivalent functions are designed to work in similar ways but it's not a proxy command (it's not calling the old ones - it's a new interface directly onto the Apt libraries) so there may be some edge-case changes.

There are also some obvious omissions ( download , policy , etc) that power-users will miss and there are a whole raft of undocumented commands ( purge still works but I can't find anything on it).

16.04 Update: A lot of the omissions have now been included but aren't yet documented, nor do they have Bash-completions. It's a shame it's taking this long to implement functionality that already exists in the codebase but oh well. My advice is that if you're used to an apt-{get,cache} command, try it on apt . It might work.

There's also a DIFFERENCES TO APT-GET(8) section in the man apt page that's interesting:

The apt command is meant to be pleasant for end users and does not need to be backward compatible like apt-get(8). Therefore some options are different: · The option DPkgPM::Progress-Fancy is enabled. · The option APT::Color is enabled. · A new list command is available similar to dpkg --list. · The option upgrade has --with-new-pkgs enabled by default.

And if you want Bash-completions, I've had an attempt as writing a completions file for it already. These are included with later Ubuntu installs.