About Package Managers

[adrianHOOHAHA]

Hi,

I just want to clarify something about package management systems. As a Linux newbie, one thing I know for sure is that there are other package management systems other than apt like rpm, packman, portage, etc. And apt and rpm are the most common and most debated of which is better than which.

But after reading some articles on different sites, here is what I understood so far.

1. The comparison is not actually apt vs rpm but dpkg vs rpm.
2. dpkg is a low-level CLI tool used to extract .deb files and rpm is also a low-level CLI tool used to extract .rpm files.
3. apt serves as a front-end to dpkg and yum works the same way as apt but for rpm.
4. apt has a GUI front-end in Synaptic and rpm also has a GUI front-end named blahblah.

I'm planning to install openSUSE to learn more about RPM and at the same time explore KDE. After doing some more research, more problems came.

1. What is YaST? what is the counterpart of it in say, Fedora and Mint?
2. What is Zypper? does it work the same way as apt?

Can someone explain it to me? Any comments are appreciated.

[xenopeek]

As this is about other distros as well, moving it here. APT has many more front-ends beside Synaptic. Software Manager and Update Manager are also APT front-ends, as are apt-get and aptitude on the command line. You can install many more front-ends for APT, like Apper, Muon, or probably a few dozen more. Some common ones here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_P ... Front-ends. Some front-end can work with various back-ends, so working with APT and rpm both, or even with other package management systems.

Wikipedia answers your questions I think;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zypper

YaST = control center
Zypper = apt-get or aptitude (or just the apt command on Linux Mint)

[DrHu]

Yast for Suse is basically a package manager, it selects/downloads and installs/configures software from their repositories (and of course rpm is the background process)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaST


RPM..
--the best site will be Red Hat, since they were the developer..
http://rpm.org/
http://www.icewalkers.com/rpm/cat/30/de ... x-9.0.html
http://www.tfug.org/helpdesk/linux/rpm.html

There was a nice command line tool for *rpm files, but at the moment I forgot the name, since its has been a long time since I had Fedora (red Hat) running..
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxT ... ation.html
--ok I found it: name was YUM
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/08/yum ... -examples/
http://yum.baseurl.org/

[adrianHOOHAHA]

As this is about other distros as well, moving it here. APT has many more front-ends beside Synaptic. Software Manager and Update Manager are also APT front-ends, as are apt-get and aptitude on the command line. You can install many more front-ends for APT, like Apper, Muon, or probably a few dozen more. Some common ones here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_P ... Front-ends. Some front-end can work with various back-ends, so working with APT and rpm both, or even with other package management systems.

Wikipedia answers your questions I think;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zypper

YaST = control center
Zypper = apt-get or aptitude (or just the apt command on Linux Mint)

so basically APT has a GUI front-end called Synaptic set as the default for Linux MInt? and other GUI front-ends like Apper and Muon also set as default on other APT-based linux distros, am I right?

Yast for Suse is basically a package manager, it selects/downloads and installs/configures software from their repositories (and of course rpm is the background process)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaST


RPM..
--the best site will be Red Hat, since they were the developer..
http://rpm.org/
http://www.icewalkers.com/rpm/cat/30/de ... x-9.0.html
http://www.tfug.org/helpdesk/linux/rpm.html

There was a nice command line tool for *rpm files, but at the moment I forgot the name, since its has been a long time since I had Fedora (red Hat) running..
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxT ... ation.html
--ok I found it: name was YUM
http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/08/yum ... -examples/
http://yum.baseurl.org/

so what you are saying is YaST works the same way as Synaptic/mintInstall but solely for openSUSE?

[xenopeek]

Linux Mint has its own developed Software Manager and Update Manager as common GUI front-ends to APT. Synaptic can be used for the same, and is installed on Linux Mint by default because there are users that prefer it. That is suitable for users that understand exactly what they are doing, and offers for example also various tools for fixing and analyzing broken package situations.

For the others, yes there are other distros that default to a different GUI front-end to APT. Debian 7 KDE has Apper as a default, and Kubuntu 12.10 has Muon. But there are many more front-ends and probably for each you can find a distro that has made it its default

But again; you can install/use whichever APT front-end you prefer.

[adrianHOOHAHA]

Linux Mint has its own developed Software Manager and Update Manager as common GUI front-ends to APT. Synaptic can be used for the same, and is installed on Linux Mint by default because there are users that prefer it. That is suitable for users that understand exactly what they are doing, and offers for example also various tools for fixing and analyzing broken package situations.

For the others, yes there are other distros that default to a different GUI front-end to APT. Debian 7 KDE has Apper as a default, and Kubuntu 12.10 has Muon. But there are many more front-ends and probably for each you can find a distro that has made it its default

But again; you can install/use whichever APT front-end you prefer.

thank you for making it clear to me. then can you please confirm if this is correct?

----------------------------------- APT------------------------------------RPM
file format -------------------.deb; .tar.*-----------------------------.rpm

package manager---------------dpkg---------------------------------rpm

CLI front-end-----------apt(ubuntu, mint)---------------------yum(fedora); zypper(openSUSE)

GUI front-end-----------synaptics, mintinstall(mint)--------packagekit, yumex(fedora)
-----------------------------------apper(debian)------------------YaST (openSUSE)
----------------------------------muon (kubuntu)

[adrianHOOHAHA]

bump* ^_^

[xenopeek]

For APT that's a summary of what I wrote, but that is not all there is to tell about APT. Like I said, there are many more front-ends and many more distros with different default front-ends

[adrianHOOHAHA]

For APT that's a summary of what I wrote, but that is not all there is to tell about APT. Like I said, there are many more front-ends and many more distros with different default front-ends

looks like I have to do much more research. thank you!