Now for a geeky post.

Since a while, apt installs recommended packages by default too alongside the dependencies, like aptitude does. However, you might pull in quite a lot of packages you don't really need that way. Here's how to stop it:

apt-get install -o APT::Install-Recommends=false [packagename you want to install]

Or, better even, add a file to your /etc/apt/apt.conf.d directory. I named it 06norecommends :

APT
{
    Install-Recommends "false";
    Install-Suggests "false";
};