Howto generate passwords from a shell in Ubuntu or Debian

I found 3 text based password generators in Ubuntu 8.04. I needed something to generate quick relatively random passwords for a project. All 3 generate pronounceable passwords, though unpronounceable are an option for pwgen and apg but not gpw. Here are my other thoughts.

• pwgen is in Ubuntu main. It has the largest list of random passwords by default to foil people watching and to improve the randomness.
• apg accepts some random text input and has an extensive set of parameters for building passwords.
• gpw is a much simpler and less developed program only accepting 2 parameters: the number of passwords to generate and the length of each password.

They are all small enough to be easily installed and tested for various purposes. If I had to pick 1 to recommend it would be apg.