What are the best Linux package managers?

Question

29

Options
Considered

882

User
Recs.

Mar 30, 2020

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

20 Options Considered

Best Linux package managers	Price	Packages	packages
89 DPKG (Debian Package Manager)	-	>55.000	-
88 Portage	-	-	-
86 RPM (RPM Package Manager)	-	-	-
85 Pacman	-	-	-
84 pkgsrc	Free	-	18560

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score 139 · Answer 1

DPKG (Debian Package Manager)

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

Raghu Ranganathan's Experience

I've used dpkg across multiple ubuntu distros and have never been disappointed with it. It works well, and has been maintained well. Although it is a great package manager with the highest package support I know of, it lacks in flexibility and has not aged as well as other managers like pacman. I'd still recommend this if you are using a debian based linux distro. See More

Specs

Packages:>55.000

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

Very complicated and redundant packaging process

Filling out all requirements for .deb creation is such a pain that a lot of developers resort to packaging .deb files manually, because official packaging tools are too strict. See More

Buster Blue's Experience

They're simple to use and have never given me any major problems. 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

WorthyTaevataat's Experience

Naff, bloated, and slow. 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

David Aslan French's Experience

easy to use and neigh on universal. highly recommend. See More

Top Pro

Standard archives

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

Ajay Kumar Rawani's Experience

Awesome ! 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

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

See All

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score 55 · Answer 2

Portage

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

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

Haxmeister's Experience

The best dependency resolution of all package managers. Portage compiles and installs packages to your machines specific instruction set for the most efficient functionality achievable by a given software. It is light years ahead of binary package managers. 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

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

Deuxis's Experience

Portage is the Linux source-based package manager, giving perfect control over packages via tweaking the build process, like only including the support and dependencies of packages the user wants it to support. 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

Feature creep

It is very complicated and offers plenty of options. 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

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

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

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

See All

score 35 · Answer 3

RPM (RPM Package Manager)

Top Pro

Follows the UNIX philosophy

It only does one thing and that well. See More

Top Con

No interaction

RPM does not support user interaction upon install. See More

Top Pro

Part of LSB

It is part of the Linux standard base. See More

Top Con

Many forks

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

Top Pro

Standard archives

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

Very easy to create packages

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

See All

score 209 · Answer 4

Pacman

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

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

ThriftyVanapagan's Experience

10/10 would reccoment 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

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

PrudentSzelatya's Experience

Very good packages manager. Every packages are always up to date. Very simple and straightforward. See More

Top Pro

Zstd compression

Uses Zstd compression for fast downloads & updates. See More

Top Con

Poor Multiarch support

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

DebonairWatatsumi's Experience

The dirtiest package manager. It doesn't keep track of which dependencies were installed explicitly and which were transitive. 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 leasure 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

PopularPrabhasa's Experience

it fast and used simple command 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

Unintuitive syntax

Pacman has a difficult syntax and commands to remember. See More

niingu's Experience

THE fastest package manager I have encountered so far.. the name says it all Pac(kage)Man(ager) :) See More

Top Pro

Manages dependencies reliably

Top Con

Naive

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

Electrux Redsworth's Experience

Works properly, all the time! 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

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

Deuxis's Experience

Pacman is simplistic. It's good at only one job, fetching prebuilt packages. While this complies with the unix philosophy, in practice it severely limits Pacman's usefulness, making it more like a part of an actual package manager. 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

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

cosmo's Experience

Pacman redefines what a package manager could be with super simple commands and incredibly fast runtimes. It's also amazingly extensible with wrappers like Powerpill and Yay as well as hooks before, during, and after operations. 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

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

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

No parallelization

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

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 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 Pro

Kernel build ordered

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

See All

score 20 · Answer 5

pkgsrc

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

Complicated

It has many options. See More

Specs

packages:18560

requires sudo:yes

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

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

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 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

See All

score 51 · Answer 6

Nix

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

Steep learning curve

davidak's Experience

Technically very advanced package manager. User interface improvements are in development. 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

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

Raymond Gauthier's Experience

I use this to manage the configuration of all my machines and use it for most projects every time I can. It can subsume any language specific package manager (e.g.: pypi2nix, etc). Use it and you will finally be able to focus on your job instead of installing stuff ;) 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

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

Feels slightly over-complicated

See All

score 4 · Answer 7

AppImage

Top Pro

Easy to use

just execute the package to run the software See More

Top Con

No automatic updates

you have to redownload the application to update it See More

Top Pro

No integration into the system

leaves your system untouched See More

See All

score 12 · Answer 8

XBPS (X Binary Package System)

Top Pro

Extremely fast

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 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

Written from scratch

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

See All

score 6 · Answer 9

PiSi (Packages Installed Successfully as Intended)

Top Con

Simple syntax

score 5 · Answer 10

URPM (User RedHat Package Manager)

Top Pro

Great RPM fork

Once forked from RPM by Mandrake and improved See More

score 11 · Answer 11

Entropy - the Sabayon package manager

Top 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 See More

score 5 · Answer 12

Conda

Top Pro

Multi-platform

Top 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. See More

DebonairWatatsumi's Experience

It tries to integrate with the system but it only messes it up. It's surprisingly easy to build something with, say, pipenv, (which is the de facto python build tool) only to discover it was built with some weird python provided by conda. See More

Top Pro

Large comunity of package maintainers at conda-forge

https://conda-forge.github.io/ See More

Top Pro

Support for multiple environments

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Binary installs

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

Top Pro

Open source

Conda is open source and on Github, so if you see something wrong you can fix it and submit a patch. See More

See All

score 25 · Answer 13

YUM

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

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

Simple syntax

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

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

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 Con

Poor design

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

Top Pro

Supports multiple verification methods

Supports verification with GPG and MD5. See More

Top Pro

Clean and easy to understand

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

See All

score 8 · Answer 14

Docker

Top Pro

Total isolation

Applications run in their own separate virtualized operating systems See More

Top 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. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac

Top Pro

Composability

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

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

A Godsend when used with Portainer

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

See All

score 3 · Answer 15

eopkg

Top Pro

Simple syntax

Top Con

Not powerful

score 9 · Answer 16

Flatpak

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

Cross-distribution

You can install flatpak packages on any distro you want. See More

SensibleUksakka's Experience

Another idiotic idea from RedHat/GNOME... See More

Specs

Default Repository:FlatHub.org

Initial Maintainer:Alex Larsson

Top Pro

Application sandboxing

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

David Aslan French's Experience

Could use a little bit better documentation but it's relatively new and it's an ambitious project worth keeping an eye on. Also, unlike snap it doesn't do nutty things to your filesystem. See More

Top Pro

A well-written documentation

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

See All

score 12 · Answer 17

GNU Guix

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

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

SplendidAnnaPerenna's Experience

Guile is awesome for management 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 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 Pro

Can build containers right-away, from docker to tarballs

see guix pack --help and https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/blog/2018/tarballs-the-ultimate-container-image-format/ See More

See All

Answer 18

0install

Add Video or Image

score 1 · Answer 19

Linuxbrew

Top Pro

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

David Aslan French's Experience

Linuxbrew is a really cool project! It's a port of the famous macOS Homebrew package manager to linux. You can run it on all sorts of linux distros, even Windows Subsystem Layer. Packages can be contained to your user home folder so you don't need root privileges to install stuff (though it's easier if you do have such privileges). Highly recommend! See More

Top Pro

can install packages to the ~/user-home-folder.

Top Pro

Can install packages without root privileges

Top Pro

can run on Windows Subystem Layer

Top Pro

distro independent

See All

score 3 · Answer 20

Snapd

Top 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 See More

Top Pro

works on multiple distros

IntelligentYiDeokchun's Experience

Installed with every Ubuntu flavor, snap packages are a resource hog on older systems See More

David Aslan French's Experience

Exciting experiment in creating a way of distributing packages that is more distro independent. It's favored by Linus if I read correctly. It's interesting. I don't like how it sections off parts of your filesystem mounts, it looks hacky, but it's also super easy to use for starting up server software! You might even say it's.... a snap! See More

See All

20 Options Considered

My Recommendation for DPKG (Debian Package Manager)

My Recommendation for DPKG (Debian Package Manager)

Great multiarch support

Does not work well with packagekit

Follows the UNIX philosophy

Very complicated and redundant packaging process

De facto package manager / widely used

Very easy to create packages

Standard archives

Fast

Plenty of frontends

User interaction

My Recommendation for Portage

My Recommendation for Portage

Decide which dependencies to install

Very slow

Sandboxes build process

High memory usage

Can install multiple versions of the same package simultaneously

Feature creep

Allows both binary and source installation

Building from source take a lot of processing time

Simple overlay management

Respects customized config files

You can view a list of programs that can be installed

Implements a standard with alternate implementations

My Recommendation for RPM (RPM Package Manager)

My Recommendation for RPM (RPM Package Manager)

Follows the UNIX philosophy

No interaction

Part of LSB

Many forks

Standard archives

Plenty of different frontends

Very easy to create packages

My Recommendation for Pacman

My Recommendation for Pacman

Fast

Not KISS

Packaging signing keyring and mirror list

Bad handling of conflicts

Zstd compression

Poor Multiarch support

Advanced when you want it

Doesn't always clean up after itself

Synchronizes package lists with the master server

Unintuitive syntax

Manages dependencies reliably

Naive

Simple syntax

Bloated

Easy to create custom repositories

No official way to downgrade packages

Many wrappers available which extend functionality

Painfully slow

Pacman hooks add power and flexibility

No parallelization

Can be made to use any downloader

No partial upgrades

Simple and easy to use with custom repositories

Supports colored output

Kernel build ordered

Supports deltas

My Recommendation for pkgsrc

My Recommendation for pkgsrc

Adapted for use on over a dozen different operating systems

Complicated

Both binary packages and source build possible

Relatively complicated setup and installation

pkgin is an apt-like tools for installing binaries from pkgsrc

Offering tooling for backporting fixes

My Recommendation for Nix

My Recommendation for Nix

No side effects when building packages

Steep learning curve

Can use multiple versions of the same package

Cannot handle filetypes that have different semantics across different versions

The configuration works on "All machines"

Does not work well for services on non-NixOS systems