Another (fairly) recent improvement for apt, but on the UI side, is the apt command [1]. It "combines the most commonly used commands from apt-get and apt-cache. The commands are the same as their apt-get/apt-cache counterparts but with slightly different configuration options." So no need to remember that it's apt-cache search, and it's a shorter command. (I know you can set aliases, but this works by default, so on a live USB or another user's machine.) Bash completion didn't work at first, at least on Ubuntu, but as of 15.10 it's working.
this is good! i'm mostly homebrew on mac these days, but every once in a while i find myself on an apt-based linux system, and i've always blown away at how obscure and unintuitive apt is.
[1]: https://mvogt.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/apt-1-0/