Finding base packages with APT?

Question

This has been bugging me for a while now. If I want to install the xfce desktop environment for example, I can use apt-cache search xfce - but this gives me 500 results, when all im looking for is the base package, not secondary packages for the desktop itself. How would I effectively find the base package for things?

Answer 1

Try using for apt-cache search ^xfce | less.

This way you only search for the packages that begins with xfce. (With less, you can go trough them a page at a time).