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What is the best alternative to Pacman?
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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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Top
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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Pro
Intuitive CLI
Yay's commands and output make sense for anyone used to the pacman package manager.
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Top
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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Experiences
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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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Top
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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Top
Con
Big file size
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Top
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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Top
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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Experiences
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81
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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Top
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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41
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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Top
Pro
Full control over installed packages
You can fully control all packages if you use it properly.
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Experiences
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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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Top
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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Top
Pro
Fast
DPKG isn't as bloated as other package managers since it is only made for local package management.
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Top
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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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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Top
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
YUM
All
14
Experiences
Pros
9
Cons
5
Top
Con
Can be very slow to download headers if not on broadband
Yum can be much slower than other package managers if the internet speed is not at least average to high.
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Top
Pro
Avoids dependency hell
All the metadata for installed software is stored into a XML file. This is used to avoid conflicting dependencies among packages. What's more, YUM also automatically syncs remote metadata to the local client in order to avoid failures if a command is not run at the correct interval.
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Top
Con
Slow (and might be fragile) dependency resolution
YUM dependency resolution is very slow. In addition to it, the people often experiencing very hard dependencies (it might be not a YUM problem).
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Top
Pro
Simple syntax
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Con
Does fsync often
Like its successor, DNF, YUM does fsync too often. The result is poor YUM and system performance while YUM does its work.
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Top
Pro
Binary delta for faster transfer times
Yum supports Delta RPMs which allow transmitting only the parts of the package that have changed.
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Top
Con
Very slow overall
YUM is very slow - beginning with relatively slow startup, extremely slow default plugins, slow dependency resolution, and ending with slow installation of packages.
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Top
Pro
Is/was the industry standard
YUM is still widely used in corporate environments.
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Top
Con
Poor design
YUM is written in Python 2 and people often blaming the quality of YUM's code.
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Top
Pro
Provides pre and post install sanity checks
What might be thought of a standard feature, isn't. Thankfully RPM provides both a transaction test and a post install verification to make sure everything installs neatly.
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Top
Pro
Supports multiple verification methods
Supports verification with GPG and MD5.
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Top
Pro
Clean and easy to understand
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Top
Pro
Supports multiple compression methods
Supports gzip, bzip2, lzma, or xz compression.
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Top
Pro
Allows for complex dependency definitions
Alongside allowing dependency on a certain package, it allows depending on a library, versioned symbol, or a GAC'd Mono assembly.
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28
15
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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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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