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What is the best alternative to YUM?
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Conda
All
6
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
3
Top
Con
Doesn't have everything
Conda is relatively new and has a smaller user-base, so the set of packages available is limited.
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Pro
Binary installs
They are fast and reliable as they do not need to compile before installation.
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Con
No way to resume downloads
Any download that is canceled or interrupted will have to be started over from the beginning as there is no built in solution for resuming downloads.
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Pro
Allows for multiple environments
It is great for developers since you can easily switch between complete environments with different versions of packages, for testing and development.
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Con
Installs huge collection of default unneeded libraries
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Pro
Open source
Conda is open source and on Github, so if you see something wrong you can fix it and submit a patch.
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Free
34
15
yay
All
7
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
1
Top
Pro
Easy to add features
It's written in Go so it is fairly easy to add features or tweak this amazing tool.
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Top
Con
Written in Go
Running a Go program requires the Go runtime. Go is also a garbage collected language, so the program isn't as responsive as it could be.
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Top
Pro
Intuitive CLI
Yay's commands and output make sense for anyone used to the pacman package manager.
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Pro
Written in Go
The compiled program is snappy while the source is easy to read.
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Top
Pro
Available as a precompiled binary
Both yay and yay-bin are in the AUR, the latter of which doesn't require any dependencies or compilation, making installation and updates quick and painless.
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Top
Pro
Yogurt interactive mode
Write package name without keys [yay <packagename>] to enter interactive mode.
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Top
Pro
Doesn't rebuild already-installed apps like Trizen
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71
7
AppImage
All
6
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
3
Top
Con
No wayland support
Apps look pretty bad on 4k monitors.
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Pro
No integration into the system
Leaves your system untouched.
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Top
Con
No automatic updates
You have to re-download the application to update it.
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Top
Pro
Easy to use
Just execute the package to run the software.
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Con
Big file size
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Pro
Easy deployment of software
It just works across different distros.
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18
3
XBPS (X Binary Package System)
All
8
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Extremely fast
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Top
Con
Not just one command to run
It's not a very big drawback, just not as convenient as one command with multiple options to remove and search for apps.
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Top
Pro
Can detect incompatibilities
XBPS can detect incompatible shared libraries or dependencies and gives you options before installing.
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Top
Con
Unable to create packages under a non-xbps distribution
Makes maintaining packages a hassle.
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Top
Pro
Can install binaries or build from source
When installing software you can choose to install binaries or build it from source (natively or cross-compiled).
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Top
Pro
Lots of features
XBPS can not only be used for installing/removing packages, but it can query for package info (such as version, dependencies, size etc), reconfigure packages, report and fix issues by modifying the package database, search for alternatives, manage local repositories and various other useful tools.
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Top
Pro
Allows partial updates
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Pro
Written from scratch
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Experiences
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38
6
RPM (RPM Package Manager)
All
9
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
3
Top
Con
No interaction
RPM does not support user interaction upon install.
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Top
Pro
Easy to create packages on non-rpm based distros
This makes maintenance and support easy.
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Top
Con
Many forks
Currently there exist rpmv4, rpmv5 and distribution specific forks like Mandrake's urpm.
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Top
Pro
Follows the UNIX philosophy
It only does one thing and that well.
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Top
Con
Plenty of different frontends
Almost any rpm distro has its own frontend for rpm there is zypper, yum, apt-rpm, dnf, poldek and many more.
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Top
Pro
Part of LSB
It is part of the Linux standard base.
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Top
Pro
Very easy to create packages
It is very easy to create packages for it, you just need a small spec file.
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Top
Pro
Standard archives
RPM packages are simple cpio archives that have additional compression support.
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Pro
Much more advanced than apt
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49
9
pkgsrc
All
13
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
pkgin is an apt-like tools for installing binaries from pkgsrc
pkgin aims to be a tool similar to apt/yum for managing pkgsrc binaries by relying on pkg_summary for installing, removing and upgrading packages and dependencies, using a remote repo.
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Top
Con
Relatively complicated setup and installation
Installing and setting pkgsrc up is a bit more complicated than in other package managers where it often consists in running a single script.
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Top
Pro
Adapted for use on over a dozen different operating systems
Has been adopted to be used on several Unix-like operating systems and Windows. It's also the default package manager of DragonflyBSD and of the (now discounted) Bluewall Linux distro.
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Top
Con
Not so broadly used on MacOS as compared with MacPorts
You do not hear about Pkgsrc as openly as you hear the words "HomeBrew" or "MacPorts".
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Top
Pro
Installs and works in the same way as MacPorts
Installs its own dependencies which means that it is very secure. Cannot install anything unless you use the "sudo" command which is in keeping with the Unix philosophy.
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Top
Con
Outdated packages
Some packages are outdated.
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Pro
Both binary packages and source build possible
Fast software installation is possible by using binary packages. It's also easy to build from source which allows for different compile-time options (like different UI backends) as well as gaining access to pre-release versions of software in certain cases.
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Top
Con
Can't install some packages
Even building well known packages (except MacPorts) from source using the ports can fail.
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Top
Pro
Offering tooling for backporting fixes
Backporting fixes can be done by cherry-picking updates from a newer branch (pkgsrc is released every 3 months) and creating a package. Sometimes bugs need to be fixed for production and there is neither a fix in newer pkgsrc nor the softwares upstream. So pkgsrc has tools like pkgdiff, mkpatches, etc. that help with developing patches and building binary packages from that. A bit of documentation about that process can be found here.
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Top
Pro
Does not need Xcode command line tools or Xcode.
This means that you can install it fresh on a new installation of MacOS and have all your favorite apps installed right from the start.
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Top
Pro
Works easily with Ansible
Can be used from within Ansible to install packages on macOS.
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Top
Pro
Easy installation if you use 3rd party scripts
This one works brilliantly.
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Specs
packages:
18560
requires sudo:
yes
Supports Apple Silicon:
Yes
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Experiences
Free
62
11
Nix
All
9
Experiences
Pros
5
Cons
4
Top
Pro
No side effects when building packages
Nix is a purely functional package management system. This means that the act of building a package does not have side effects, such as destructively updating or deleting files that may be used by other packages.
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Top
Con
Does not work well for services on non-NixOS systems
When using Nix with anything other than NixOS you can run into difficulties with trying to start up services. For example, you can install docker with Nix, but it won't integrate with the host system's systemd leaving you to handcraft awkward workarounds in order to start the background service that docker requires. This seems like a critical flaw when using Nix on anything that is not NixOS, and it's unfortunate because this affects many of the packages many users would be most interested in using Nix to handle.
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Top
Pro
Isolated development environments
Nix allows the creation of project-specific shell and build environments which are isolated from the rest of the system. These environments are defined declaratively to ensure reproducibility.
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Top
Con
Steep learning curve
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Top
Pro
Can replace docker in some places
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Top
Con
Cannot handle filetypes that have different semantics across different versions
While the functional approach that Nix takes is great for sandboxing binary artifacts of packages, it seriously lacks any power in handling configuration files or user data. It's difficult to upgrade and downgrade files where semantics and syntax can change between versions. Especially in Debian/Ubuntu it can cause severe problems where the upgrade process blocks and the user needs to resolve the 3-way merge.
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Top
Pro
Can use multiple versions of the same package
Because of the functional approach it takes, Nix makes it easy for systems to use multiple versions of the same package simultaneously, and ensure that updating or removing a package can't break other packages.
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Top
Con
Feels slightly over-complicated
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Top
Pro
The configuration works on "All machines"
No more of the traditional: "it works on my machine". When it says reproducible, this is the real deal.
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17
Docker
All
14
Experiences
Pros
10
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Allows for portable application deployment
Docker creates a single object, containing an application with its dependencies, that can be moved between any docker-enabled machines, guaranteeing the same environment for application execution.
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Top
Con
Large image size
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Top
Pro
Git-like capabilities
Docker tracks changes in systems. It allows for commits and rollbacks and for quick deployment due to having to deploy only the updated code.
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Top
Con
Security concerns
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Top
Pro
Allows re-using components
Docker essentially allows creating boilerplate systems (a LAMP stack, for example) that can be used as a starting point on multiple projects. And you can find multiple such containers already created by people in their public registry.
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Top
Con
Kernel OS fragmentation
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Top
Pro
Automatic build
Allows automatically assembling a container from its source code.
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Top
Pro
Provides easy sharing and installation of containers through a public registry
Docker allows easily pushing and pulling containers to and from their public index.docker.io registry. Additionally, dotCloud maintains a list of official repositories of the more popular containers.
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Top
Pro
Application-centric
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Pro
Works in virtualized environments
You can set up Docker within an already virtualized environment such as a virtual machine. This allows you to run Docker on Mac and Windows, among other use-cases.
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Top
Pro
Low overhead
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Pro
Supports a wide range of isolation tools
Docker can be used with OpenVZ, systemd-nspawn, libvirt-lxc, libvirt-sandbox, qemu/kvm, BSD Jails, Solaris Zones, and chroot.
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Top
Pro
Tool ecosystem
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
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10
Portage
All
14
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
5
Top
Pro
Decide which dependencies to install
WIth portage you can decide and customize which dependencies to install through some thing called USE flags. These are keywords that when defined, will tell Portage that you want support for the chosen keyword.
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Top
Con
High memory usage
Usually takes between 400-800MB of RSS (no problem to get over 1GB), so it's nothing for an old hardware.
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Top
Pro
Sandboxes build process
Portage uses a sandbox as a safety measure during build processes. This is done to ensure that no packages accidentally write outside a 'safe' location.
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Top
Con
Building from source take a lot of processing time
Most of Portage's pros are related to its "porting" process, building packages from source. This is very resource-intensive, with the few biggest packages sometimes taking even multiple hours to update or install.
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Top
Pro
Can install multiple versions of the same package simultaneously
Slotting is a feature which allows users to install multiple versions of a software simultaneously. This is especially useful for libraries which have changed interfaces between versions.
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Top
Con
Very slow
Dependency resolution is very slow and single-threaded, so usually you will see one of your cores running like crazy for over a minute.
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Top
Pro
Allows both binary and source installation
With portage you can either compile packages from source or you can download and install their binary versions.
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Top
Con
Feature creep
It is very complicated and offers plenty of options.
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Top
Pro
Simple overlay management
Adding supplemental repositories, aka overlays, is easy with eselect-repository or layman.
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Top
Con
You can not create packages under a non-portage distribution
Makes maintaining software for gentoo based systems a burden.
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Top
Pro
Implements a standard with alternate implementations
If you need faster resolution, you can run pkgcore for search and portage for installing, and they work well together.
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Top
Pro
Respects customized config files
By default, portage doesn't delete or move any customized config files, thus enabling competent users to modify any config file however they want.
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Top
Pro
You can view a list of programs that can be installed
With portage you can view a list of all the programs that you can install by going to /usr/portage and running ls.
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Pro
Full control over installed packages
You can fully control all packages if you use it properly.
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99
21
GNU Guix
All
10
Experiences
Pros
7
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
Can setup a shell which has exactly the defined libraries available
A method which works across languages and provides a reproducible programming environment.
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Top
Con
Updates take a long time
It's gotten better over time but both updating Guix itself and updating the installed packages can take a long time.
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Top
Pro
Can always roll back to a safe state
Guix creates new profile generations for each operation. If anything goes wrong, a simple --roll-back gets you immediately back to the previous, working, generation. Because it is a purely functional package management system, generations don't affect each other, so you're back to the exact same state as before : still working.
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Top
Con
Cannot handle filetypes that have different semantics across different versions
While the functional approach that Guix takes is great for sandboxing binary artifacts of packages, it seriously lacks any power in handling configuration files or user data. It's difficult to upgrade and downgrade files where semantics and syntax can change between versions.
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Top
Pro
Can create independent packages
Guix pack creates packages which do not need Guix to be run.
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Pro
No side effects when building packages
Guix is a purely functional package management system. This means that the act of building a package does not have side effects, such as destructively updating or deleting files that may be used by other packages.
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Top
Pro
Can build containers right-away, from docker to tarballs
See guix pack --help and here.
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Top
Pro
Easy to add your own packages
The clean and declarative syntax makes it easy to define new packages by using an existing one as an example.
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Top
Pro
Doesn't require root privileges
Normal users can install packages on a Guix-enabled system, or even run their own Guix instance if the system isn't Guix-enabled.
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Specs
Price:
None
Packages:
>20,000
Requires root:
No
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26
8
DPKG (Debian Package Manager)
All
12
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
Great multiarch support
DKPG has one of the best multiarch support you can easily add new architectures with dpkg --add-architecture $ARCH to install foreign architectures.
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Top
Con
Does not work well with packagekit
Since packagekit was developed with rpm in mind it does not support all dpkg features.
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Top
Pro
Follows the UNIX philosophy
DPKG and it frontends follow strictly the UNIX philosophy that one package should do one thing well. eg: Dpkg: does simple package management APT and aptitude : adds repository and dependency tracking debconf: does configuration synaptic: allows mouse interaction to all apt/aptitude options
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Con
Package creation needs more than one file
A debian package needs at least the following files to build it with debhelper debian/source/format - deb format debian/changelog - changelog file with version number and dae etc. debian/compat - debian package version debian/control - package information, dependencies & co debian/copyright - license information debian/rules - the make file to build the package However the really important files are control, changelog and rules all other are generic.
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Top
Pro
De facto package manager / widely used
Due the popularity of Ubuntu, Debian and Linux Mint it is almost certain that you find the package you want as a pre-built deb package.
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Pro
Fast
DPKG isn't as bloated as other package managers since it is only made for local package management.
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Pro
Plenty of frontends
You can use apt, aptitude, cupt, debdelta or apt-build on the terminal.
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Top
Pro
Very easy to create packages
There are plenty of helpers to easily create packages. You just need to create 5 files: source/format, compat, rules, control & changelog and run dpkg-buildpackage.
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Top
Pro
User interaction
It is possible to interact/ask questions to all pre and post install scripts. This makes it possibe to add questions for package configuration or to display EULA/License screens that have to be accepted before installation.
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Pro
Standard archives
Deb packages are simple ar archives with additional tar, lzma, bzip, gzip support.
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Top
Pro
You can create deb packages on almost all linux distributions
This makes maintenance and support easy.
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Specs
Packages:
>55.000
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162
39
Pacman
All
27
Experiences
Pros
15
Cons
12
Top
Pro
Fast
Pacman is objectively one of the fastest package managers around. This is because it's very minimalistic and it installs only prebuilt packages.
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Top
Con
Bad handling of conflicts
Relying on the entire system being updated to the exact same version, making the famed rolling-release model ironically even worse in practice than the traditional version model.
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Top
Pro
Packaging signing keyring and mirror list
Both are also provided through packages which keeps them up to date.
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Top
Con
Poor Multiarch support
can not install regular foreign arch packages alongside and needs specific nade subarch packages.
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Top
Pro
Advanced when you want it
Pacman does not overwrite modified configuration files. Instead, it saves a .pacnew file for it which you can later merge at your leisure.
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Top
Con
Doesn't always clean up after itself
Pacman leaves new configuration versions around and generally doesn't handle file conflicts smoothly.
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Top
Pro
Manages dependencies reliably
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Top
Con
Naive
For example, it doesn't allow you to purge (remove package and its configuration files).
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Top
Pro
Simple syntax
Pacman has a relatively simple syntax which is easy to get used to. For example: pacman -Syu to update, pacman -S foo to install etc... Commands are not long and there are not many different commands to learn by heart.
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Top
Con
No official way to downgrade packages
This is related to it not supporting partial system upgrades. The very same reason prevents it from downgrading a particular package easily. Doing so can easily result in conflicts and may require a system downgrade or downgrade of multiple packages.
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Top
Pro
Pacman hooks add power and flexibility
Hooks are scripts that can run automatically before and after Pacman transactions like installation and removal of packages. For example, Pacman hooks can be used to automatically create system users and files during the installation of packages. Pacman hooks can also be used to delete configuration files and clear caches during the removal of packages.
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Top
Con
Unintuitive syntax
Pacman has a difficult syntax and commands to remember.
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Top
Pro
Many wrappers available which extend functionality
Here are three examples: Powerpill, Yay, and Octopi. Powerpill extends Pacman by enabling asynchronous downloads of packages from multiple mirrors using Aria2 and Reflector. Yay extends Pacman, by enabling automatic download, compilation, and installation of packages from the AUR. Octopi extends Pacman with a GUI frontend written in Qt.
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Top
Con
No partial upgrades
Pacman just doesn't support partial upgrades. It has to always be system upgrade and never package upgrade.
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Top
Pro
Easy to create custom repositories
Pacman makes it fairly easy and straightforward to create your own repository with signatures.
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Top
Con
Not KISS
It is not simple or does follow the UNIX philosophy instead it tries too much at the same time which results in slowness and errors.
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Top
Pro
Simple and easy to use with custom repositories
The instructions and configurations for using a custom local or remote repositories are pretty simple and straightforward.
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Con
Bloated
It is over complicated and bloated compared to other *NIX package managers like dpkg, rpm or pkgsrc. For example, they follow the Unix philosophy and do "one" thing well, which is to install local packages and use other frontends to configure, remote install or to search for packages/files. Pacman, however, tries to do all those tasks in one app, which adds some flaws.
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Top
Pro
Zstd compression
Uses Zstd compression for fast downloads & updates.
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Con
Painfully slow
It takes ages to update the system compared to dpkg or rpm, which due its poor performance by unpacking very large packages with many files to the filesystem.
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Top
Pro
Synchronizes package lists with the master server
It allows the system to always be up to date.
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Con
No parallelization
Neither downloads nor processing can be set to run in parallel.
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Top
Pro
Supports colored output
And looks cleaner and nicer with such thing enabled. Simply find and uncomment "Color" option in /etc/pacman.conf or add it yourself if it doesn't exists.
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Top
Con
You can not create pacman packages under a non-pacman distribution
For example on fedora/suse/debian/ubuntu, you can easily create rpm and deb packages, but you can not create pacman packages, which makes it uncomfortable to support arch/pacman packages.
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Top
Pro
Can be made to use any downloader
Allows to change its downloader from internal to any other like wget or aira2.
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Top
Pro
Kernel build ordered
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Pro
Supports deltas
However default Arch Linux mirror servers does not provide deltas, so it is not so useful like with DNF.
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286
71
Flatpak
All
10
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Cross-distribution
You can install flatpak packages on any distro you want.
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Top
Con
Bloated
Due to the way Flatpack handles packaging, this can lead to a large cache being created which quickly inflates to unreasonable sizes. Not only this, but using flatpack requires a large chunk of space to be reserved for it's own file hierarchy.
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Top
Pro
fast
searching, installing and updating are faster than others in my experience
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Top
Con
Difficult to export packages
It is difficult and convoluted to export installed packages and move to another system.
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Top
Pro
Doesn't bog system down like snaps.
Plus it's not proprietary.
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Top
Con
Doesn't work well with CLI programs
Invoking CLI programs can be a pain. From the weird reverse DNS package names to difficulty in easily managing container environment.
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Top
Pro
Application sandboxing
All applications are limited to a set of predefined permissions, enhancing privacy and security.
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Top
Pro
A well-written documentation
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Top
Pro
Flexible runtime management
You can install a lot of runtimes for different apps, making applications a lot more compatible while still allowing some applications to share their runtimes.
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Specs
Default Repository:
FlatHub.org
Initial Maintainer:
Alex Larsson
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