dpkg is the Linux Debian packages manager. When apt or apt-get are used they invoke the dpkg program to install or remove applications while including additional functions dpkg doesn’t like dependencies resolution. The program dpkg can be used to install or remove programs, list them or specific information on them.

Which package manager does a Debian machine use?

APT. APT is the Advanced Package Tool, an advanced interface to the Debian packaging system which provides the apt-get program. It provides commandline tools for searching and managing packages, and for querying information about them, as well as low-level access to all features of the libapt-pkg library.

Where do Debian packages get installed?

Debian already comes with pre-approved sources to get packages from and this is how it installs all the base packages you see on your system (if a user did a net-install). On a Debian system, this sources file is the “/etc/apt/sources.