Introducing
The Slant team built an AI & it’s awesome
Find the best product instantly
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now
4.7 star rating
0
What is the best alternative to Conda?
Ad
Ad
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.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
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".
See More
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.
See More
Top
Con
Outdated packages
Some packages are outdated.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Con
Can't install some packages
Even building well known packages (except MacPorts) from source using the ports can fail.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Works easily with Ansible
Can be used from within Ansible to install packages on macOS.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy installation if you use 3rd party scripts
This one works brilliantly.
See More
Specs
packages:
18560
requires sudo:
yes
Supports Apple Silicon:
Yes
Hide
See All
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.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Con
Steep learning curve
See More
Top
Pro
Can replace docker in some places
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Con
Feels slightly over-complicated
See More
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.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
81
17
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Intuitive CLI
Yay's commands and output make sense for anyone used to the pacman package manager.
See More
Top
Pro
Written in Go
The compiled program is snappy while the source is easy to read.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Yogurt interactive mode
Write package name without keys [yay <packagename>] to enter interactive mode.
See More
Top
Pro
Doesn't rebuild already-installed apps like Trizen
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
71
7
AppImage
All
6
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
3
Top
Con
No wayland support
Apps look pretty bad on 4k monitors.
See More
Top
Pro
No integration into the system
Leaves your system untouched.
See More
Top
Con
No automatic updates
You have to re-download the application to update it.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to use
Just execute the package to run the software.
See More
Top
Con
Big file size
See More
Top
Pro
Easy deployment of software
It just works across different distros.
See More
Hide
Get it
here
18
3
XBPS (X Binary Package System)
All
8
Experiences
Pros
6
Cons
2
Top
Pro
Extremely fast
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Can detect incompatibilities
XBPS can detect incompatible shared libraries or dependencies and gives you options before installing.
See More
Top
Con
Unable to create packages under a non-xbps distribution
Makes maintaining packages a hassle.
See More
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).
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Allows partial updates
See More
Top
Pro
Written from scratch
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to create packages on non-rpm based distros
This makes maintenance and support easy.
See More
Top
Con
Many forks
Currently there exist rpmv4, rpmv5 and distribution specific forks like Mandrake's urpm.
See More
Top
Pro
Follows the UNIX philosophy
It only does one thing and that well.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Part of LSB
It is part of the Linux standard base.
See More
Top
Pro
Very easy to create packages
It is very easy to create packages for it, you just need a small spec file.
See More
Top
Pro
Standard archives
RPM packages are simple cpio archives that have additional compression support.
See More
Top
Pro
Much more advanced than apt
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
49
9
Homebrew
All
12
Experiences
Pros
8
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
Quick access to a large repository of open source software
Homebrew makes it easy for people to quickly install any open source software (that is contained within the apps repositories) for Mac.
See More
Top
Con
May cause issues when trying to create symlinks or installing in places where SIP has changed permissions
One of the things to like about Homebrew is that it refuses to run things under sudo most of the time. This is a great policy, but it causes issues when you want to create symlinks or install in places that SIP has changed permissions on. (Alternatively, you could install Homebrew somewhere other than /usr/local, but that might break various packages that depend on having stuff in and relative to /usr/local/.)
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to setup and use
Once installed, you control Homebrew using the brew command. You can find packages using brew search, install them using brew install and remove them using brew uninstall.
See More
Top
Con
Command line tools for XCode required
Once xcode is installed you can install Homebrew, including new(er)/different versions of most of the build stuff that xcode-select installed, like a newer gcc, newer git, etc.
See More
Top
Pro
Open Source
See More
Top
Con
Relies on outdated system libs
See More
Top
Pro
Less maintenance than Macports
Macports seems to be able to get into a bad state where new packages are unable to be installed, or installed software was unable to be updated. This simply hasn't happened with Homebrew. In addition to not having to deal with corruption problems, Homebrew installs packages in userland. Not requiring root to install software is a big win.
See More
Top
Pro
Builds quickly and requires few dependencies
Homebrew as much as possible uses already existing libraries and tools to install software thus making builds quick and requiring few dependencies.
See More
Top
Pro
Unintrusive
Homebrew installs packages to their own directory and then symlinks their files into /usr/local. Homebrew won’t install files outside its prefix, and you can place a Homebrew installation wherever you like.
See More
Top
Pro
Does not require using sudo
One of the things to like about Homebrew is that it refuses to run things under sudo most of the time. This is a great policy, but it causes issues when you want to create symlinks or install in places that SIP has changed permissions on.
See More
Top
Pro
Homebrew tries very hard to use existing tools and libraries
Homebrew’s recipes try very hard to use the existing tools and libraries in OS/X, so they tend to build much faster and require fewer dependent libraries.
See More
Specs
requires sudo:
no
packages:
4635
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
635
73
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.
See More
Top
Con
Large image size
See More
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.
See More
Top
Con
Security concerns
See More
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.
See More
Top
Con
Kernel OS fragmentation
See More
Top
Pro
Automatic build
Allows automatically assembling a container from its source code.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Application-centric
See More
Top
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Low overhead
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Tool ecosystem
See More
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
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.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Con
Feature creep
It is very complicated and offers plenty of options.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Con
You can not create packages under a non-portage distribution
Makes maintaining software for gentoo based systems a burden.
See More
Top
Pro
Simple overlay management
Adding supplemental repositories, aka overlays, is easy with eselect-repository or layman.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Full control over installed packages
You can fully control all packages if you use it properly.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
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.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Can create independent packages
Guix pack creates packages which do not need Guix to be run.
See More
Top
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Can build containers right-away, from docker to tarballs
See guix pack --help and here.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Specs
Price:
None
Packages:
>20,000
Requires root:
No
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
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.
See More
Top
Con
Does not work well with packagekit
Since packagekit was developed with rpm in mind it does not support all dpkg features.
See More
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
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Fast
DPKG isn't as bloated as other package managers since it is only made for local package management.
See More
Top
Pro
Plenty of frontends
You can use apt, aptitude, cupt, debdelta or apt-build on the terminal.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Standard archives
Deb packages are simple ar archives with additional tar, lzma, bzip, gzip support.
See More
Top
Pro
You can create deb packages on almost all linux distributions
This makes maintenance and support easy.
See More
Specs
Packages:
>55.000
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Packaging signing keyring and mirror list
Both are also provided through packages which keeps them up to date.
See More
Top
Con
Poor Multiarch support
can not install regular foreign arch packages alongside and needs specific nade subarch packages.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Con
Doesn't always clean up after itself
Pacman leaves new configuration versions around and generally doesn't handle file conflicts smoothly.
See More
Top
Pro
Manages dependencies reliably
See More
Top
Con
Naive
For example, it doesn't allow you to purge (remove package and its configuration files).
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Con
Unintuitive syntax
Pacman has a difficult syntax and commands to remember.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Con
No partial upgrades
Pacman just doesn't support partial upgrades. It has to always be system upgrade and never package upgrade.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to create custom repositories
Pacman makes it fairly easy and straightforward to create your own repository with signatures.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Zstd compression
Uses Zstd compression for fast downloads & updates.
See More
Top
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Synchronizes package lists with the master server
It allows the system to always be up to date.
See More
Top
Con
No parallelization
Neither downloads nor processing can be set to run in parallel.
See More
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Can be made to use any downloader
Allows to change its downloader from internal to any other like wget or aira2.
See More
Top
Pro
Kernel build ordered
See More
Top
Pro
Supports deltas
However default Arch Linux mirror servers does not provide deltas, so it is not so useful like with DNF.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
286
71
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.
See More
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.
See More
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).
See More
Top
Pro
Simple syntax
See More
Top
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Binary delta for faster transfer times
Yum supports Delta RPMs which allow transmitting only the parts of the package that have changed.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Is/was the industry standard
YUM is still widely used in corporate environments.
See More
Top
Con
Poor design
YUM is written in Python 2 and people often blaming the quality of YUM's code.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports multiple verification methods
Supports verification with GPG and MD5.
See More
Top
Pro
Clean and easy to understand
See More
Top
Pro
Supports multiple compression methods
Supports gzip, bzip2, lzma, or xz compression.
See More
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.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
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.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
fast
searching, installing and updating are faster than others in my experience
See More
Top
Con
Difficult to export packages
It is difficult and convoluted to export installed packages and move to another system.
See More
Top
Pro
Doesn't bog system down like snaps.
Plus it's not proprietary.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Application sandboxing
All applications are limited to a set of predefined permissions, enhancing privacy and security.
See More
Top
Pro
A well-written documentation
See More
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.
See More
Specs
Default Repository:
FlatHub.org
Initial Maintainer:
Alex Larsson
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
30
22
Rudix
All
5
Experiences
Pros
2
Cons
3
Top
Con
Not many packages
Although Rudix is in development since 2005, there's a distinct lack of packages available. This limits the usefulness of the package manager for the user.
See More
Top
Pro
Statically linked packages
Using statically liked packages allows each package to contain all of the dependencies it needs, this way the user just installs to then use the app. No muss no fuss.
See More
Top
Con
Lacks man files for installed packages
The man files for tools are not installed with the binaries.
See More
Top
Pro
Very easy and fast
Installing and removing packages is very easy, fast and painless thanks to using binary installs.
See More
Top
Con
Not sandboxed
Binaries go directly to /usr/bin, so they are not sandboxed.
See More
Hide
Free
10
1
Homebrew Cask
All
12
Experiences
Pros
4
Cons
7
Specs
Top
Pro
Extends Homebrew
Homebrew Cask adds functionality to Homebrew such as allowing downloads of commercial licensed apps.
See More
Top
Con
Cask update is usually manual
This defeats the purpose of the packet manager.
See More
Top
Pro
Active project
The project is very active, with commits almost daily and plenty of conversation in issues. This means that the app will see bugs fixed and possibly new features added.
See More
Top
Con
Requires Xcode
Homebrew Cask requires that Xcode is installed, which may be more work than what some want to spend on configuring this app.
See More
Top
Pro
"Zap" application configuration
this is an interesting feature allowing user to remove application configuration leftowers
See More
Top
Con
Software no longer needed by anything (orphans) is hard to delete
See More
Top
Pro
Manage graphical applications through the command line
Homebrew Cask allows you to install graphical applications through the command line, rather than having to go through the standard installation process. E.g. brew cask install google-chrome
See More
Top
Con
The developers are hostile to the users reporting issues
See More
Top
Con
Silently spies on the user by default
See here.
See More
Top
Con
Duplicate apps found in brew may cause issue
There are warnings provided that apps found in brew should not be installed with brew cask (and vice versa). While the user is warned of this, mistakes can happen, which would be better to just see them avoided all together by not supplying duplicate apps.
See More
Top
Con
Goes against Apple's design choices with macOS and breaks the system
See More
Specs
packages:
4051
requires sudo:
no
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
56
10
Fink
All
6
Experiences
Pros
3
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Con
Doesn't support newer macOS versions
Doesn't support macOS Big Sur or Monterey. Says it's "coming soon."
See More
Top
Pro
Will be familiar to apt-get users
Fink is based on apt-get making the transition to anyone used to Debian-based environments easier.
See More
Top
Con
Pre-compiled packages are often out of date
It happens often that the user will come across out of date, pre-compiled packages. This can impede on using new features released in apps due to using older releases.
See More
Top
Pro
Install from source
See More
Top
Pro
Packages provided as binaries
Installed applications don't need to be compiled and built on the system.
See More
Specs
packages:
12737
Hide
Free
18
4
Nix package manager
All
13
Experiences
Pros
10
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Con
Steep learning curve
There are lots of unfamiliar concepts and jargon (e.g. fixpoint, instantiate, realise).
See More
Top
Pro
It's easy to revert any change in your environment
Every time your profile changes, you get a new generation of your profile and older generations are kept around, so you can easily (and atomically) revert to older version of your profile.
See More
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.
See More
Top
Pro
Packages installed with Nix don't overlap with packages installed in /usr/local
Since packages are stored in the /nix directory, it won't overlap with anything you'd install in /usr/local or wherever else.
See More
Top
Pro
Can keep around several profiles for you to use
You can have different (probably overlapping) sets of software installed in two or more profiles that will be handled (changed, versioned, upgraded, reverted) independently. All software will be installed in the same /nix/store, so any overlaps between your sets will be physically installed only once.
See More
Top
Pro
You always and atomically get an isolated consistent profile
Every time you install, delete or change anything you get a new fresh copy of your user environment (set of symlinks to files in /nix/store) that's stored in the same /nix/store and handled mostly the same way. Your "profile" (symlink to one of environments) is updated after everything else is ready, so you'll never end up in a half-finished state of your system.
See More
Top
Pro
Does not require root priviledges
Everything is owned by your user (unless you use more powerful multiuser mode that doesn't require root either).
See More
Top
Pro
Uses binary caches (that are provided) so you don't have to build anything locally
Due to its functional nature, it can just download a binary package with the same hash if its available and it'll get the very same package as you'd build locally (to the last bit that is).
See More
Top
Pro
Packages don't change after they are built
Nix treats packages like values in a functional language. Since they are built by functions without side effects they never change after they are built.
See More
Top
Pro
Very easy to share compiled binaries between machines
You can share packages via HTTP or SSH (push or pull) with just some simple commands.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to install
Requires just one shell script to install, only one directory is created via sudo. This makes for a pretty simple install method that most can grasp.
See More
Top
Pro
Many apps
Since it is compatible on Mac and Linux, there are many apps in their repos.
See More
Specs
packages:
15858
requires sudo:
no
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
41
11
MacPorts
All
20
Experiences
Pros
15
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
Provides a consistent experience across OS X versions
MacPorts eschews Apple-supplied libraries and links sources against its own making sure that the experience is the same regardless of what OS X version is used.
See More
Top
Con
New Packages and Updates take time
Macports isn't the first choice for developers producing new packages or binaries for macOS. Nor is it the fastest in getting updates. But in general, it usually is one of the most up to date and will be updated eventually. Some would see this as a con in comparison to Homebrew.
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to use
Detailed instructions on the homepage are easy to follow. Official GUI app is also available
See More
Top
Con
Bad at limiting dependencies
MacPorts has a habit of pulling very specific versions of dependencies for each package. It downloads different version of already existing dependencies even in cases where the existing dependency version would have worked seamlessly.
See More
Top
Pro
Generally very up to date
MacPorts generally gets new software soon after it's available. This way users will not have to worry if their software is up to date.
See More
Top
Con
Downloads unneeded libraries duplicating functionality already provided by Apple's libraries
As MacPorts eschews Apple-supplied libraries and links sources against its own a large duplication of functionality across MacPorts and Apple libraries can be found.
See More
Top
Pro
Nice variants system
MacPorts has a variants system that allows customizing builds with author provided options.
See More
Top
Con
Requires root permissions (sudo) for installation of packages
A really good security feature, but some see it as a con.
See More
Top
Pro
Has many more packages than its competitors
As of this writing, 20K packages. 3 to 5x more than other current package managers.
See More
Top
Pro
Requires SUDO to install apps
No need to worry if some rogue app will change your binaries or configuration.
See More
Top
Pro
Download libraries instead of relying on Apple's caprices
Considering just how often Apple breaks things, any reduplication of of Apple-supplied libraries with the canonical sources is an asset.
See More
Top
Pro
Fast
Written in Tcl & C, it's generally significantly faster than the competition. Tcl is also quite readable and comparable to Ruby, so it's also friendly to newcomers.
See More
Top
Pro
Supports older Mac operating systems
Homebrew dropped support for old Macs. MacPorts still supports them.
See More
Top
Pro
MacPorts is a native application: C + TCL
No need to install Ruby, or any other programming language.
See More
Top
Pro
More packages than competition
See More
Top
Pro
Apple Silicon Ready
With Apple moving over to its own silicon, macports has been ready for the move to ARM since 2.6.4
See More
Top
Pro
Initially started and developed by Apple employees and supported by Apple itself
Reading the story behind MacPorts, it is the only one that was developed by Apple by an Apple employee. In fact it is the same person that was responsible for creating the FreeBSD port system.
See More
Top
Pro
Great support for older systems
See More
Top
Pro
Most of the available packages work
For example, trying to install Finch using Pkgsrc doesn't work, while installing it using MacPorts works perfectly. Finch isn't even on Homebrew's radar.
See More
Specs
requires sudo:
yes
Supports Apple Silicon:
Yes
Hide
See All
Experiences
Free
92
25
pipenv
All
7
Experiences
Pros
4
Cons
3
Top
Con
Buggy
See More
Top
Pro
Easy to work with different Python versions in virtual envs
In pipenv, spinning up an virtual environment for Python 2 or 3 is simply just pipenv --two or pipenv --three.
See More
Top
Con
Doesn't use modern Python package management standards
See More
Top
Pro
Similar to pip
If you already know pip, you know most of pipenv too
See More
Top
Con
A bit slow due to the dependency checks (lock)
It’s obviously an added feature compared to pip, but it does get significantly slower with a project with lots of packages.
See More
Top
Pro
PyCharm integration
PyCharm directly integrates with pipenv.
See More
Top
Pro
Has a dependency graph
Running pipenv graph gives you a nice overview of what your dependencies are.
See More
Hide
See All
Experiences
Get it
here
4
4
Built By the Slant team
Find the best product instantly.
4.7 star rating
Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to Safari
Try it now - it's free
{}
undefined
url next
price drop