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So I install a package

apt-get install mypackage

apt-get installs the package with dependencies, and reports that 10 megabytes were installed on my disk.

But I change my mind, so I go

apt-get remove mypackage

And apt-get announces that 166 kilobytes will be freed.

I don't want to litter my disk with leftovers, so I try

apt-get autoremove mypackage

Now apt-get wants to remove 166 megabytes from my disk.

How do I, you know, undo the last install operation, or just uninstall a single package and all its dependencies?

Alternatively, is there another package management tool that I could use (even on different distro), which would roughly treat install operations as atomic operations which can be done and undone?

APT doesn’t manage package changes as transactions, so there’s no built-in operation to undo a package installation (or any other package manipulation). However, it does log all the operations it performs, grouped by end-user request: if you look in /var/log/apt/history.log, you’ll find the mypackage installation, along with a list of all the other packages which were installed automatically alongside it. You can use this to undo the installation manually.

You could also use aptitude instead, for your general package management: it effectively autoremoves by default. This won’t help you right now though since it will want to remove the same 166MiB of packages as apt autoremove.

As pointed out by Weijun Zhou, yum and dnf do manage package changes as units which can be undone (in some circumstances). dnf history will list the transactions stored in the history, and dnf history rollback or dnf history undo can be used to roll the history back or undo a specific transaction (if possible). I’m not sure yum or dnf can be used properly instead of APT on Debian-based systems; you might need to switch to Fedora, RHEL or CentOS if you want to use those tools for all your package management.

By the way:

I found that the most reliable way to "undo" an install operation is to look at the apt log and uninstall all packages which were installed by this operation.

Therefore I created a solution to my problem. It helps with parsing the apt log and reverting operations.

This is how I would use it:

List last 10 apt operations:

sudo cat /var/log/apt/history.log |apt-history
91 apt-get install pulseaudio*
92 apt-get install gnome-control-center*
93 apt-get install pavucontrol
94 apt-get upgrade sublime-text
95 /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade
96 /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade
97 apt-get install adb
98 apt-get dist-upgrade
99 /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade
100 apt-get install qemu-system

Display details about all packages which were installed by operation #100 (the last one)

sudo cat /var/log/apt/history.log |apt-history 100 Install
seabios:amd64 (1.10.2-1, automatic), ipxe-qemu:amd64 (1.0.0+git-20161027.b991c67-1, automatic), qemu-system-mips:amd64 (1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u3, automatic), openbios-sparc:amd64 (1.1.git20161120-2, automatic), qemu-system-misc:amd64 (1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u3, automatic), qemu-system-ppc:amd64 (1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u3, automatic), libvdeplug2:amd64 (2.3.2+r586-2.1, automatic), qemu-system-x86:amd64 (1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u3, automatic), openhackware:amd64 (0.4.1+git-20140423.c559da7c-4, automatic), libspice-server1:amd64 (0.12.8-2.1+deb9u1, automatic), libxenstore3.0:amd64 (4.8.3+xsa262+shim4.10.0+comet3-1+deb9u6, automatic), qemu-utils:amd64 (1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u3, automatic), qemu-efi:amd64 (0~20161202.7bbe0b3e-1, automatic), qemu-system-sparc:amd64 (1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u3, automatic), libxen-4.8:amd64 (4.8.3+xsa262+shim4.10.0+comet3-1+deb9u6, automatic), libfdt1:amd64 (1.4.2-1, automatic), qemu-slof:amd64 (20161019+dfsg-1, automatic), qemu-system-arm:amd64 (1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u3, automatic), qemu-system-common:amd64 (1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u3, automatic), openbios-ppc:amd64 (1.1.git20161120-2, automatic), qemu-system:amd64 (1:2.8+dfsg-6+deb9u3)

Uninstall these packages and their configuration.

sudo apt-get remove --purge `sudo cat /var/log/apt/history.log |apt-history 100 Install as-apt-arguments`

Warning: to avoid unforseen consequences, only do this for the last install command and roll back one command at a time.