If you’ve hopped between Linux distributions as much as I have, you know that each major family of distros introduces you to a different package manager. At first, it can feel a bit daunting (apt on Debian/Ubuntu, dnf on RHEL/Fedora, pacman on Arch, and zypper on openSUSE), but these tools all serve the same purpose of installing and updating software.
After using Linux for years (across everything from Debian to Arch-based systems), I’ve grown comfortable with all of them. Even niche distros like Slackware, Gentoo, and Void. In this post, I’ll break down the major package managers, how they differ, and what it’s like to use each one. We’ll also touch on the universal package formats (Snap and Flatpak) that aim to work across distributions, and lastly mention a few niche package management systems. Let’s dive in!
I’ve always liked Zypper (and if I remember correctly, DNF was also fine), purely because it feels sane in everything it does.
We love to make a religion out of them, but a package manager is ultimately just a secondary tool. It installs other tools, which are what you’re actually interested in using.
So, I shouldn’t need to learn a scramble of letters to achieve that. I shouldn’t need to think about refreshing the repository listing. The less I need to worry about instructing the package manager, the better.