What are the best Linux package managers?

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Considered

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Recs.

Jan 21, 2024

Last
Updated

Pacman vs Portage vs DPKG (Debian Package Manager)

vs XBPS (X Binary Package System) vs RPM (RPM Package Manager) vs Nix vs pkgsrc vs yay vs PiSi (Packages Installed Successfully as Intended) vs AppImage vs Docker vs GNU Guix vs Entropy - the Sabayon package manager vs URPM (User RedHat Package Manager) vs YUM vs Conda vs eopkg vs Flatpak vs Linuxbrew vs APT vs Topgrade vs 0install vs Snapd vs Synaptic Package Manager vs DNF vs Zypper vs Discover vs Conda vs Snap vs GNOME Software vs Pamac vs pacman vs apt2 vs Snappy

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>55.000

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18560

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yes

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Yes

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Windows, Linux, Mac

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>20,000

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None

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Alex Larsson

Default Repository

FlatHub.org

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Pros + Cons

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.

Comment

Pro
Packaging signing keyring and mirror list

Both are also provided through packages which keeps them up to date.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Manages dependencies reliably

[add description]

Comment

Con
Poor Multiarch support

can not install regular foreign arch packages alongside and needs specific nade subarch packages.

Comment

Con
Doesn't always clean up after itself

Pacman leaves new configuration versions around and generally doesn't handle file conflicts smoothly.

Comment

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.

Comment

Con
Naive

For example, it doesn't allow you to purge (remove package and its configuration files).

Comment

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.

Comment

Con
Unintuitive syntax

Pacman has a difficult syntax and commands to remember.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Con
No partial upgrades

Pacman just doesn't support partial upgrades. It has to always be system upgrade and never package upgrade.

Comment

Pro
Easy to create custom repositories

Pacman makes it fairly easy and straightforward to create your own repository with signatures.

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Zstd compression

Uses Zstd compression for fast downloads & updates.

Comment

Pro
Synchronizes package lists with the master server

It allows the system to always be up to date.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Con
No parallelization

Neither downloads nor processing can be set to run in parallel.

Comment

Pro
Can be made to use any downloader

Allows to change its downloader from internal to any other like wget or aira2.

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Kernel build ordered

[add description]

Comment

Pro
Supports deltas

However default Arch Linux mirror servers does not provide deltas, so it is not so useful like with DNF.

Comment

Pro
A lot of available packages in Arch User Repository

The Arch User Repository (AUR) provides more packages for Pacman than any single repository for any other distribution. No more clumsy manual installations!

Comment

Pro
Simple package creation and distribution

pacman/PKGBUILD is easy to handle and yet powerful. Creating custom packages and distributing them via AUR is simpler than in other major distributions.

Comment

Con
AUR packages have to be built from source

Arch Linux argues that, by storing all of their AUR (Arch User Repository) packages as source with a build script, they prevent unsecure packages from being uploaded to the repository. While this has been proven to be useful, it does make installing community packages rather slow.

Comment

Con
Connecting to the AUR is a pain

For example, some AUR packages, used "git://" protocol to fetch code, may get blocked under restricted network such as behind a proxy, then you need to fix its build script by yourself.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Simple overlay management

Adding supplemental repositories, aka overlays, is easy with eselect-repository or layman.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Full control over installed packages

You can fully control all packages if you use it properly.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Con
Feature creep

It is very complicated and offers plenty of options.

Comment

Con
You can not create packages under a non-portage distribution

Makes maintaining software for gentoo based systems a burden.

Comment

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.

Comment

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

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Fast

DPKG isn't as bloated as other package managers since it is only made for local package management.

Comment

Pro
Plenty of frontends

You can use apt, aptitude, cupt, debdelta or apt-build on the terminal.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Standard archives

Deb packages are simple ar archives with additional tar, lzma, bzip, gzip support.

Comment

Con
Does not work well with packagekit

Since packagekit was developed with rpm in mind it does not support all dpkg features.

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
You can create deb packages on almost all linux distributions

This makes maintenance and support easy.

Comment

Pro
Supports searching for packages

If you are not sure about the name of the package you are looking to install, you can easily search for it using the search function provided by the apt tools: apt-cache search $search_term

Comment

Pro
Synaptic finds all dependencies reliably

Its search is as simple or as detailed as you like, adding "Fixing" "Broken" "Upgradeable" the list goes on. Also manages PPA's on other software sources smartly.

Comment

Pro
Tab-completion of package names

By pressing <Tab> when writing a package name, for example sudo apt-get install ge<Tab> it will be autocompleted by apt: sudo apt-get install gedit. Though it's worth noting that to activate this feature in Ubuntu you need to edit the /etc/bash.bashrc file and remove the comments from these lines: # enable bash completion in interactive shells #if ! shopt -oq posix; then # if [ -f /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ]; then # . /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion # elif [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then # . /etc/bash_completion # fi #fi

Comment

Pro
Apt is intuitive and easy to use

APT uses a simple syntax to search, install and remove packages.

Comment

Pro
Excellent GUI in Synaptic Package Manager

The graphical embodiment of apt in synaptic package manager is excellent.

Comment

Con
Slow

Compared to many package managers, Apt is a very slow experience. From fetching packages, to caching them, to actually installing them, (and all the steps between).

Comment

Con
Suboptimal dependency resolution

Apt has only a rather simple heuristic based resolver that can result in users getting package blockages when putting individual packages on hold.

Comment

Pro
install -f

The most package issues can be easily resolved with aptitude install -f

Comment

Con
Highly unreliable

"You may have held broken packages"...

Comment

Con
Counterintuitive CLI

For installing and removing you have "apt-get", for searching "apt-cache", for listing "dpkg". "dpkg" uses only switches whereas "apt-*" also commands, ... At least there is this "aptitude" frontend, but that's not a standard tool.

Comment

Con
Heavy for single-package repositories first install

Trusted source repositories are great (designed) for distributing large batches of interconnected software and updates. But, Trusted repositories are often used as the preferred way to distribute single 3rd party packages (and future updates), with the mandatory step of updating the entire software cache/dep-tree. These updates may be lengthy and therefore annoying for single package installation use. Notably, this annoyance can be avoided by the developer; One such example is the google-chrome deb package which updates you're trusted repertories as a post install step, though this is less transparent which can be it's own annoyance.

Comment

Con
Lack of sanity checks.

One thing that apt appears to lack is transaction tests and post-install verification. Coupled with the aforementioned poor dependency resolver, this can lead to deep headaches.

Comment

Pro
Extremely fast

[add description]

Comment

Pro
Can detect incompatibilities

XBPS can detect incompatible shared libraries or dependencies and gives you options before installing.

Comment

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).

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Allows partial updates

[add description]

Comment

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.

Comment

Con
Unable to create packages under a non-xbps distribution

Makes maintaining packages a hassle.

Comment

Pro
Written from scratch

[add description]

Comment

Pro
Good president

[add description]

Comment

Con
No interaction

RPM does not support user interaction upon install.

Comment

Pro
Easy to create packages on non-rpm based distros

This makes maintenance and support easy.

Comment

Pro
Follows the UNIX philosophy

It only does one thing and that well.

Comment

Pro
Part of LSB

It is part of the Linux standard base.

Comment

Pro
Very easy to create packages

It is very easy to create packages for it, you just need a small spec file.

Comment

Pro
Standard archives

RPM packages are simple cpio archives that have additional compression support.

Comment

Con
Many forks

Currently there exist rpmv4, rpmv5 and distribution specific forks like Mandrake's urpm.

Comment

Pro
Much more advanced than apt

[add description]

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Con
Steep learning curve

[add description]

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Can replace docker in some places

[add description]

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Con
Feels slightly over-complicated

[add description]

Comment

Con
Complicated

It has many options.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Con
Can't install some packages

Even building well known packages (except MacPorts) from source using the ports can fail.

Comment

Pro
pkgin is an apt-like tool 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.

Comment

Pro
Can be installed on almost any unix system

[add description]

Comment

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".

Comment

Pro
Batteries included

The pkgsrc offers a rich framework for creation of new packages. This includes not only support for many build systems, but also checks for sanity packaging, and also number of facilities to ensure package source portability between different operating systems.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Uses "Kaptan"

[add description]

Comment

Con
Simple syntax

[add description]

Comment

Con
No wayland support

Apps look pretty bad on 4k monitors.

Comment

Pro
No integration into the system

Leaves your system untouched.

Comment

Pro
Easy to use

Just execute the package to run the software.

Comment

Con
No automatic updates

You have to re-download the application to update it.

Comment

Pro
Easy deployment of software

It just works across different distros.

Comment

Con
Big file size

[add description]

Comment

Pro
Total isolation

Applications run in their own separate virtualized operating systems

Comment

Pro
Manage application data in separate volumes

Any state that applications need to maintain is put in a volume, which can be mounted on the local filesystem or managed by Docker.

Comment

Pro
Reproducable enviroments

Because of the high level of isolation and the image-based build system, you can move Docker containers between machines effortlessly. With fleetctl and CoreOS you can even do this automatically.

Comment

Con
Heavy

Images that aren't optimized to have a small base (like Alpine) can often be 100MB/+ and for running lightweight utilities the startup time of a Docker image may not make sense.

Comment

Con
Large image size

[add description]

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Con
Security concerns

[add description]

Comment

Pro
Composability

Applications can be combined by linking ports on a virtual network.

Comment

Pro
A Godsend when used with Portainer

For simple or semi-simple use-cases, using Docker with Portainer makes microservice management a breeze

Comment

Pro
Can setup a shell which has exactly the defined libraries available

A method which works across languages and provides a reproducible programming environment.

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Can create independent packages

Guix pack creates packages which do not need Guix to be run.

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Can build containers right-away, from docker to tarballs

See guix pack --help and here.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Very fast and high QA

You can tweak command linea to enable and set the multifetch of packages. Support deltas and since hereditate mostly the packages of Portage, with along all the QA test results in a high QA

Comment

Con
Not a package manager

It is a frontend (like apt) just for Portage.

Comment

Pro
Great RPM fork

Once forked from RPM by Mandrake and improved.

Comment

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.

Comment

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).

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Con
Poor design

YUM is written in Python 2 and people often blaming the quality of YUM's code.

Comment

Pro
Simple syntax

[add description]

Comment

Pro
Binary delta for faster transfer times

Yum supports Delta RPMs which allow transmitting only the parts of the package that have changed.

Comment

Pro
Is/was the industry standard

YUM is still widely used in corporate environments.

Comment

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.

Comment

Pro
Supports multiple verification methods

Supports verification with GPG and MD5.

Comment

Pro
Clean and easy to understand

[add description]

Comment

Pro
Supports multiple compression methods

Supports gzip, bzip2, lzma, or xz compression.

Comment

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.

Comment

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.

Comment

Con
Still some of pip packages cannot be installed from conda

Then pip install may install conflicting packages against conda or at another location if a user didn't use pip install --targets.

Comment

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
Multi-platform

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Pro
Large comunity of package maintainers at conda-forge

See here.

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Pro
Support for multiple environments

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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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Pro
Binary installs

They are fast and reliable as they do not need to compile before installation.

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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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Pro
Excellent rollback and repair features.

Can easily rollback if an update goes awry. Can also choose to check all installed packages and repair them, instead of just repairing or reinstalling individual packages.

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Pro
Simple syntax

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Con
Not powerful

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Pro
Cross-distribution

You can install flatpak packages on any distro you want.

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Pro
fast

searching, installing and updating are faster than others in my experience

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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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Pro
Doesn't bog system down like snaps.

Plus it's not proprietary.

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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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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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Pro
Application sandboxing

All applications are limited to a set of predefined permissions, enhancing privacy and security.

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Pro
A well-written documentation

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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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Con
Why?

It seems to me a great solution to a problem that doesn't actually exist.

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Con
So slow!

Because it's not made with binaries but code, the update and the installation of a new package is extremely slow due to the compiling time.

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Pro
Can install packages to the ~/user-home-folder

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Pro
Based on mega popular macOS Homebrew package manager and has a broad selection of packages to install

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Pro
Fast

The installation of a new package is almost as fast as pacman

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Con
Slow and resource heavy

Due to its self-contained nature, snaps take a long time to open and consume more resources than other packages

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Con
Proprietary backend

The server backend is proprietary.

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Pro
works on multiple distros

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Pro
Great and complete search

On other options it can be difficult to find the addons or dependencies . You will always find them in Synaptic.

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Con
Slightly difficult old fashioned interface

While it is true that Synaptic is feature packed, it just so happens that a lot of the features are not inclusive of each other and using it often feels like herding cats. You'll note the endless number of categories, universe vs multiverse, custom filters and so on. It's great if you're into that sort of thing, but awful if you're just looking for a package. It takes something that should be simple, and turns it into a complete mess.

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Pro
Full featured and easy to use

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Pro
Most functional package manager out there

Over the years Synaptic has survived while others try to be as good. The trend is towards simpler tools, but whenever you need functionality, synaptic usually trumps other options.

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Pro
Delta RPMs

Binary diffs for smaller downloads

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Pro
Download multiple packages simultaneously for faster downloads

DNF can download packages concurrently for faster downloads.

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Pro
Fast dependency resolution

DNF uses a SAT solver for dependency resolution. This brings even more speed and avoids dependency hell.

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Con
Not a package manager

It is a frontend (like apt) just for RPM.

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Con
Poor design is one of the reasons it feels slow and unresponsive

Why not to build all metadata after all metadata downloads? Instead of download-build, download-build... Why not to show more details what it exactly doing for example on startup, on "running transaction test/check"? Pacman shows progress of these steps and does not feel so verbose even in comparison with DNF.

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Con
Very slow

Being built natively in Python, DNF is significantly slower than other popular binary package managers for Linux. But a lot is converted now to c languages, so it’s not that slow anymore.

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Pro
Reliable

Far more reliable that the alternatives due to solid architecture and sophisticated dependency resolution algorithms.

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Pro
User-friendly output

The output of DNF is helpful, clearly explaining what's happening and laying results out after a command completes.

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Con
Too slow startup on HDD

For showing its usage and do nothing, DNF takes about 1-3 seconds for first startup and 0.300 seconds (300ms) for next startups on HDD. For comarison: APT 0.015s (15ms), Pacman 0.015s (15ms), YUM 0.200s (200ms), Zypper 0.050s (50ms).

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Con
Dependency resolving may be slow

I can't believe in that, but sometimes it looks like that's true. Maybe the reason is that DNF does not cache its resolves and re-resolving every time or so.

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Pro
Well documented

Fully documented, unlike some of the alternatives (cough apt-get cough)

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Pro
Powerful debug options

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Con
Metadata can't be downloaded in parallel

Instead of slow decompression (but less downloading) of zchunk metadata introduced in Fedora 30, this may be helpful for slow metadata downloads.

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Con
TAB key auto-completion is pathetic

dnf ins[TAB] [TAB]... Wait 3-10 seconds (you cannot type nor clear text) and hope for some auto-completion (as far as I know it even might not auto-complete sometimes).

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Con
Does fsync very often

As a result, DNF (and whole system) on HDD becomes very slow.

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Con
May use up to 2 GB of RAM

Don't believe me? Simply type dnf repoquery -l and enjoy unresponsive system.

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Pro
DNF is a complete tool

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Con
No good front-end available

DNF has a few front-end options, but none of them are very good. DnfDragora takes multiple minutes to initialize its package list, operates very slow in some cases, and it has several bugs that can crash the application. GNOME Software interfaces fairly well with DNF through PackageKit, but there are still sometimes issues with instability and packages failing to install.

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Con
Not yet at feature parity with YUM

As DNF is the successor to YUM, it still has a lot of features that are in YUM but that are missing here. Things like skipping broken package during install, debug, verbose output, enable repo or exclude packages during install have little to no support in DNF.

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Pro
Fast

Zypper uses a SAT solver for dependency solving issues and this helps with increasing Zypper's speed considerably.

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Pro
Great dependency solver

Zypper's dependency solver is built on top of SAT solver which is one of the best package dependency solvers available for Linux.

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Pro
Clean and logical

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Pro
Beautiful and powerful GUI

YaST2, the GUI for Zypper, is very powerful and elegant. It's very fast and responsive, it features an excellent UI and very intuitive repository management, and it can be configured to run using GTK+ or Qt5.

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Pro
Delta RPMs

Use of Delta RPMs greatly reduces the amount of data that needs to be downloaded during updates.

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Pro
Easy to only install patches by type and severity

Easy to only install patches by type and severity (eg. install only important security patches). great for system stability and minimizing changes in production.

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Pro
Easy to only install patches by type and severity

Easy to only install patches by type and severity (eg. install only important security patches). great for system stability and minimizing changes in production.

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Con
Not a package manager

It is a frontend (like apt) just for RPM.

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Pro
Vendor-locks

As a result, you may allow yourself to forget about package replaces from third-party repositories - Zypper will not allow that with this feature enabled.

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Con
Manual conflict resolution required

Every single time a package trying to be installed or upgraded has a conflict, Zypper asks you what to do. There is no way to automatically just upgrade packages that will upgrade without any problems.

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Con
Not the default package manager for many systems

Zypper is still relatively new. As such, it's not available as the default package manager in many systems.

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Pro
Enables updating of firmware

Via fwupd

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Pro
Easy to use even for novice users

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Pro
Shows descriptions, ratings, reviews, meta-information, changelogs and screenshots for apps

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Con
Not a package manager

It is a frontend for packagekit and packagekit provides bindings for your native package manager (dpkg, rpm & co).

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Pro
Modern, beautiful and intuitive GUI

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Pro
Support for Flatpak and Snaps

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Pro
You can also manage Addons for Plasma and applications with it

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Con
Only displays GUI applications and not all packages

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Pro
One click installation

To install a new application, hit search, type in its name or what it does, and click Install. It's just that easy.

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Pro
Cross-platform, yet a native GNOME application

Looks great and works intuitively, regardless of which distribution you use.

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Pro
Shows application screenshots

Lets you see what an app looks like before installing it.

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Con
Buggy

Doesn't seem to always work.

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Pro
makes super easy to uninstall software and it's depencies.

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Pro
Easy to update apps in batches

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Con
Wants to reboot excessively

Some packages require rebooting to update, e.g. the kernel, or core features of GNOME Shell. Most do not. GNOME Software is unable to make a good decision in this regard. This morning it wanted to reboot my laptop in order to install Nano. This is not an anomaly. It wants to reboot all the time. It's like taking a trip back to Windows 95.

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Con
Extremely slow updates

Slow to gather updates. Really, really slow. An update that might take dnf a few seconds to gather may take GNOME Software several minutes.

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Pro
Supports Flatpak

Software supports Flatpak repositories and packages.

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Con
Confusing which versions of software to install. Some are not from the distributor, some are unofficial, and the messaging isn't super great. Also, the screenshots in the store are MUCH too low resolution to glean any really meaningful information out of.

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