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I would but I love APT. I'll just stick to Debian Testing.

by a124556 12y ago

cones688 12y ago
> I would but I love APT As a near 100% RHEL/Fedora user I am always wondering if there is anything but a material difference between apt and yum? From using Ubuntu extensively a few years ago they seem to have near identical feature set?
- pjc50 12y ago
  Both have a dependency system, but they are quite different in how they work and resolve dependencies. Apt/dpkg is also a lot more careful about its treatment of configuration files. Debian packages generally ask questions during preconfigure, build a config file, and then run out of the box. But if you already have a config file it will either be left alone or ask you to resolve the merge. http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/634/what-are-the-pros-cons-of-deb-vs-rpm http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/634/what-are-the-pro...
- Crito 12y ago
  Only differences that I have noticed and cared about as a home user: Yum lets you do `yum search` but Apt splits that off with `apt-cache` (this is annoying because with yum I can just swap out that 'search' with my line editor). Apt tends to be faster for equivalent operations.
  - dspillett 12y ago
    If you use aptitude instead of apt* you get most of the features rolled into one command, and it also provides a curses based interface if you prefer that to the command line but are in a situation where a full GUI is not available to you can use an X based tool. I'm not sure about Ubuntu but it has been standard issue in Debian for some time.
  - bashinator 12y ago
    dpkg -S /some/file # tells you what package provides that file dpkg -L some-package # lists all the files provided by a package apt-get search <regex> # lists all package names matching <regex>
    - cben 12y ago
      $ apt-get search foo E: Invalid operation search It's apt-cache search, and it searches full descriptions, not just package names.
      - bashinator 12y ago
        My bad - I meant `aptitude search`
  - ZenoArrow 12y ago
    I hope one day there's a command line package manager that works with both DPKG and RPM. Something tells me that will expose the real reason people stick with one over the other; remembering the package manager syntax. I feel no great allegiance to one side or the other, there's nothing of real merit I can differentiate them on, the only real result of the split is package maintainers duplicating work.
    - twic 12y ago
      I have a set of shell scripts which wrap apt, yum, and macports, so i only have to remember one set of commands. They only cover a small fraction of what those tools can do, but they cover 90% of what i do day to day. They were not at all hard to write.
  - dorfsmay 12y ago
    Use aptitude.
- dec0dedab0de 12y ago
  As a near 100% RHEL/Fedora user I am always wondering if there is anything but a material difference between apt and yum? Atleast some of it is momentum from being first. APT was the main reason I jumped ship from Redhat, but that was before yum.
- sharpneli 12y ago
  There used to be a massive difference. Mostly because debian had apt-get and Redhat had just rpm. That's why we still have sites like rpmfind. Nowadays there is not that big of a difference from end user point of view. As a dev I still love dpkg-buildpackage way more than rpmbuild.

I would but I love APT. I'll just stick to Debian Testing.

by a124556 12y ago

I would but I love APT. I'll just stick to Debian Testing.

> I would but I love APT As a near 100% RHEL/Fedora user I am always wondering if there is anything but a material difference between apt and yum? From using Ubuntu extensively a few years ago they seem to have near identical feature set?

pjc50 12y ago
Both have a dependency system, but they are quite different in how they work and resolve dependencies. Apt/dpkg is also a lot more careful about its treatment of configuration files. Debian packages generally ask questions during preconfigure, build a config file, and then run out of the box. But if you already have a config file it will either be left alone or ask you to resolve the merge. http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/634/what-are-the-pros-cons-of-deb-vs-rpm http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/634/what-are-the-pro...
Crito 12y ago
Only differences that I have noticed and cared about as a home user: Yum lets you do `yum search` but Apt splits that off with `apt-cache` (this is annoying because with yum I can just swap out that 'search' with my line editor). Apt tends to be faster for equivalent operations.
- dspillett 12y ago
  If you use aptitude instead of apt* you get most of the features rolled into one command, and it also provides a curses based interface if you prefer that to the command line but are in a situation where a full GUI is not available to you can use an X based tool. I'm not sure about Ubuntu but it has been standard issue in Debian for some time.
- bashinator 12y ago
  dpkg -S /some/file # tells you what package provides that file dpkg -L some-package # lists all the files provided by a package apt-get search <regex> # lists all package names matching <regex>
  - cben 12y ago
    $ apt-get search foo E: Invalid operation search It's apt-cache search, and it searches full descriptions, not just package names.
    - bashinator 12y ago
      My bad - I meant `aptitude search`
- ZenoArrow 12y ago
  I hope one day there's a command line package manager that works with both DPKG and RPM. Something tells me that will expose the real reason people stick with one over the other; remembering the package manager syntax. I feel no great allegiance to one side or the other, there's nothing of real merit I can differentiate them on, the only real result of the split is package maintainers duplicating work.
  - twic 12y ago
    I have a set of shell scripts which wrap apt, yum, and macports, so i only have to remember one set of commands. They only cover a small fraction of what those tools can do, but they cover 90% of what i do day to day. They were not at all hard to write.
- dorfsmay 12y ago
  Use aptitude.
dec0dedab0de 12y ago
As a near 100% RHEL/Fedora user I am always wondering if there is anything but a material difference between apt and yum? Atleast some of it is momentum from being first. APT was the main reason I jumped ship from Redhat, but that was before yum.
sharpneli 12y ago
There used to be a massive difference. Mostly because debian had apt-get and Redhat had just rpm. That's why we still have sites like rpmfind. Nowadays there is not that big of a difference from end user point of view. As a dev I still love dpkg-buildpackage way more than rpmbuild.