package-management.md

Package Management

List of software package management systems Package Managers Package Formats

Distribution package formats

• DEB used in Debian (Ubuntu, Mint)
• RPM used in Red Hat (Fedora) and SUSE
• PKG.tar.zst used in Arch (Manjaro)
• ebuild used in Gentoo, is just a test file with instructions on how to build

Application package formats

These package formats can be added to any Linux distribution

• Flatpak
  • Flathub is the app store
  • This is the most popular format
• AppImage
  • AppImage is the attempt at an application store
  • This format is less popular
• Snap
  • Snapcraft is the application store
  • Owned by Canonical (Ubuntu)
  • Receives a lot of criticism but is actually a very good platform

Package Manager Front Ends

• for DEB
  • DPKG (Debian Package) base 
  • APT (Advanced package tool) core package manager
  • Aptitude front end for APT
  • Nala
• for RPM (Red Hat Package Manager)
  • YUM (Yellowdog Update Manager) base
  • DNF (Dandified YUM) base, next gen from YUM
  • ZYpp  (Zen / YaST Packages Patches Patterns Products)
    • ZYpper is the command line interface for Zypp
  • Urpmi w/ rpmdrake - Mageia only
  • Up2date - old Red Hat only
• For PKG.tar.zst 
  • Pacman (package manager)
• For ebuild
  • Portage
    • Emerge is the front end

Other package managers

• Nix
  • Purely functional package manager
• GNU Guix - BSD
• Homebrew - MacOS
  • This package manager makes MacOS usable!  I have used it since 2015
• EOPKG (Evolve OS Package) is a fork of PiSi package manager