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> Ports/pkg is better. Gentoo’s package manager is better. Strongly agree. Gentoo's Portage is the best experience I've had with a package manager on Linux. M
by asark 8y ago
> Ports/pkg is better. Gentoo’s package manager is better.
Strongly agree. Gentoo's Portage is the best experience I've had with a package manager on Linux.
My package management observations, as someone who's been using them for... a while, now.
Best experiences: Portage on Gentoo (lots of options; many packages; fast; reliable unless I broke it doing something stupid; maintaining a high level of control over the system at a low level is the only way I've ever managed to make Linux behave itself), Homebrew on MacOS (great package selection; casks are wonderful; outstanding CLI; keeping user packages away from the core system has really grown on me)
Middling: apt on Ubuntu and Debian (OK but increasingly feels dirty after getting used to Homebrew and keeping my user packages separate from the system; breaks "on its own" more often than Portage did, though still rarely; package selection just OK)
Bad: Yum/RPM on Red Hat, Fedora, and long ago, RPM on Mandrake (sloooooooowwwwwwwww and RPMs seemed to break constantly back when I used them), Macports on MacOS (slow; broke so bad the easiest thing to do was to delete the whole dir and start over about once a quarter; limited package selection)
Incidentally, Gentoo's OpenRC is the only Linux init system I've ever used that I liked and felt like I actually understood well enough to use it without apprehension or constantly needing to check documentation.
I like the idea of Nix and tried NixOS once but after an hour or so of following a guide and troubleshooting couldn't get X running so gave it up as "for those with more free time than me—try again in a few years".
- checkyoursudo 8y agoPortage and OpenRC are the two reasons that I keep Gentoo as my daily. I try about 1-2 other distros every year (in VMs or a spare laptop), and I always stay with Gentoo. I won't go so far as to say that it's objectively better, but after 10 years or so just nothing else compares for me.