Are there any Linux package management systems that stand out above the rest in terms of stability and being up to date?
Personally I've always thought that the best way to choose which Linux distro is right for you is to start by looking at package managers.
I've been using gentoo for quite a while since portage has always seemed like the king of package managers to me. I pretty much never have anything break with portage. Worst case scenario things don't work at the update stage and you get "conflicts" so it just doesn't let you update at all. But once you resolve the conflicts everything always seems to work. In my opinion that's way better than actually having things on your system break when you want to use them which seems to happen with systems managed by other package managers.
However, I think it's time for me to reassess this conclusion and maybe even consider switching from portage to something else. What are your thoughts /g/? Should I stick with portage or not?
apt is the only one that I would consider. Linux fag since 98.
All a package manager needs to do is search for, install, and update packages. Every modern package manager does this. You should be more worried about the DE your distro comes with.
>>52108258
Alright, but this isn't a survey or anything. It's not helpful if you don't give some reasoning.
>>52108338
Portage does a lot more than that, and as far as I can tell leads to a more stable system even when running bleeding edge versions of software.
I could be wrong, and that's the point of this thread. If you say
>All a package manager needs to do is search for, install, and update packages
then that would imply most of portages features are just "fluff". Why would that be the case?
>>52108446
It is fluff. Features for people who care too much about features.
>>52108338
resolving dependencies is a thing
>>52108545
That's a given, but is it really necessary? Resolve your own dependencies.
Fedora's DNF
>>52108570
you mean think like a slack user; not a bad idea, but most people... well, you know
>>52108338
>You should be more worried about the DE your distro comes with.
I don't think so, the DE is usually managed by the package manager anyway, the differences between the main ones like Aptitude, Pacman and DNF/YUM are pretty big. Apt is known for its horrible dependency solving problems and breakages. Pacman is bretty gud. DNF is bretty gud but some weird things can happen when you clean packages the first few times. Delta packages are pretty nice though, it does take longer however it uses less bandwidth.
Aptitude 5/10
Pacman 10/10
DNF 8/10
Fucking Ucuntu fagets
I love pacman and apt. Portage is autism and so is RPM.
>>52108636
Aptitude is a frontend for APT you dumbfuck.
Pacman here and also aptitude is pretty sweet. I don't use arch anymore, but the package manager was pretty great.
>>52108538
All of the features are necessary for a package manager that primarily builds everything from source. It's not fluff unless the concept of a source based package manager itself is fluff.
>>52108163
No package manager known to men is better than the fukken portage. I tried em all, - from yum to dnf, to pacman, zypper, aptitude... Portage is still better. Also, it's not even about the package manager alone, it's about the ecosystem and integration. Eselect+eix+emerge+etc-update+... make together a marvellous operating system. You will miss all that shit, anon.
>>52109936
I guess I was mostly wondering if there were any hidden gems out there, or anything in development.
I heard about xbps from void linux for example, but it's really hard to find much info no it.
Pacman > DNF > Misc others > POWER GAP > apt-get
For ones like pacman and DNF using it isn't an issue. "dnf --help" or "pacman --help" is all the walkthrough & refresher you need. Apt is shit for breaking this up into multiple programs like apt-get and apt-cache, forcing anyone who doesn't use it often to turn to google to figure out how to do anything.
