[K12OSN] [reposted] yum OR apt - which?

Les Mikesell les at futuresource.com
Thu Apr 28 14:23:16 UTC 2005


On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 08:25, Rob Owens wrote:
> I've often wondered why there are so many of these
> package installers.  Seems to me that apt came first,
> only to be duplicated by yum, up2date, urpmi, etc.  I
> haven't tried them all, but I haven't heard of any
> special features that any of them have over apt.  It
> just makes me wonder why did anybody bother?  Why
> didn't everybody just start to use apt?  It's not like
> it costs money or anything...

Apt was originally developed for Debian .deb packages.  RPM
packages include dependency information but the rpm program
doesn't do anything to automatically resolve it, so apt was
adapted as a free solution (RedHat's up2date was originally
built as a subscription plan so the proliferation of methods
really is because the first one cost money...).  Yum was
developed as the installer for Yellow Dog Linux (the Mac offshoot
of RedHat) and then ported back.  However the story isn't over
yet because now there are a lot of independently maintained
repositories of add-on stuff with potential conflicts and
apt, yum, and up2date all lack a good way to control preferences
so certain packages can be loaded from specific repositories
and then kept up to date without accidentally pulling in other
files that happen to be newer there.  So, watch for 'smart' and
maybe some others to replace the current crop.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com





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