Liam Proven composed on 2018-06-15 14:28 (UTC+0200):
David C. Rankin wrote:
So is one package manager really superior than another. Should that dictate your choice? (answer: No) Whether it is RPM, dpkg, apt or pacman or the various derivatives, they are work well. Just more syntax and different commands to make friends with.
TBH, having switched from the RPM side of the fence to the DEB side in 2004, I have found APT and DEB to be simpler and significantly more reliable.
Fedora's implementation, YUM and now DNF, is pretty smoooth -- but the supplementary tooling, such as the graphical package manager, are very poor indeed.
I find using apt/deb yum/dnf incomprehensibly difficult compared to zypper. e.g. zypper se -s irefo lists existing package versions of Firefox*. I only needed to look at one man page to find that out out. Which of these man pages shows an equivalent? apt apt-cache apt-cdrom apt-config apt-extracttemplates apt-ftparchive apt-get aptitude aptitude-create-state-bundle aptitude-curses apt-key apt-list-changes apt-mark apt-sort-pkgs dnf only has one invocation in /usr/bin, but dnf --help | grep -i version produces no answer to the same question, same as man dnf zypper al/rl name locks in or out (a) package(s), simply. I found apt-mark can apparently do the same, though I'm not sure it can't be surreptitiously overridden. I have yet to figure out if dnf's versionlock plugin has an equivalent. A man page explaining its versionlock plugin has escaped my detection. I never found one for yum. zypper mr -d simply disables a repo with 12 characters. Equivalent in Fedora: dnf config-manager --set-disabled is about 32 or 33. Even easier with openSUSE can be changing the names of the files in /etc/zypp/repos.d/ using MC, add or remove a dot or a trailing o, and immediately see the result(s). I suppose I could do the same somewhere in /etc/dnf, but no, those configs are in /etc/yum*. zypper in will update an already installed package if an update exists, install it if it's not already. No such intelligence with dnf: dnf install only works if the package is not already installed. zypper: one man page apt & its derivatives: ??? man pages dnf & its plugins: ??? man pages
Synaptic is still the best graphical package manager I've seen on any OS of any form.
I've never found a powerfule yet friendly GUI for apt, including synaptic, or for yum or for dnf. I guess I'm just spoiled by YaST2's power and UI logic. -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org