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For some of those I agree with you, but I think several of those are easy claims to defend. > strong focus on user experience [...] it will not let you down [.

For some of those I agree with you, but I think several of those are easy claims to defend. > strong focus on user experience [...] it will not let you down [...] the user can rely on predictability. [...] offer their users uncompromising release quality Fair claims in light of OpenSUSE Tumbleweed's extensive testing. It is remarkably stable for a rolling release distro, and furthermore, Tumbleweed comes pre-configured with BTRFS and snapper. That means that if anything does go wrong, rolling it back is trivial. Compared to Debian Sid, I now do much less fiddling and fixing. This is the main reason I use Tumbleweed instead of Sid; I got sick of worrying about breakage every time I updated Sid. > powerful package management system Zypper has a SAT solver for dependency resolution, in my experience it works a lot better than apt/yum, which I always found prone to jamming themselves particularly during dist updates. Maybe the situation has changed recently, I haven't kept up with apt/etc developments, but assuming that situation hasn't changed much in the past 10 years I think it is fair to say Zypper is more powerful than most of the competition. > a high-end enterprise Linux distribution that you can rely on [...] offer their users uncompromising release quality True, for SUSE Enterprise Linux. > strong focus on user experience and flexibility [...] with-user-in-mind approach True: YaST. In this regard SUSE is far ahead of Debian/Fedora/Ubuntu/etc. I believe whatever Mandrake derivatives might still exist have something similar.

mook 4y ago
FWIW, Fedora these days use dnf, which uses libsolv under the hood. https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/dnf/ https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/dnf/
- pxc 4y ago
  dnf has copied zypper's other innovations as well, like vendor change. It's also fully usable on openSUSE, as a replacement for zypper, if you so desire. :) dnf and zypper are the best of the 'old school' package managers, in my experience (and to my taste). If want traditional package management, you can't go wrong with either.
  - fsckboy 4y ago
    what are you calling the new school?
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      Nix probably?
      - pxc 4y ago
        Yep, but I'd also count some package managers which have learned from Nix but chosen a slightly different path by relaxing the requirement of 'purity', or leaning harder on containerization features. Besides the ones I mentioned in my reply which is a sibling to yours, I think the package managers for Haiku and RedoxOS fall into this category (but I can't be sure! I've never used them, so my memory of how where work is likely to have gaps).
    - pxc 4y ago
      There isn't a single one, but off the top of my head, the following package managers have been used to meet the same need (building Linux distros) but use distinct and relatively new paradigms or techniques: - Guix, Nix - Distri - Luet (I'm personally partial to the 'functional' school, which means Nix and Guix. :) One might also count package managers that are designed for building large, multi-language distributions of software but have never been used to build a whole distro. In that case, you could also include - Spack - Denxi and finally you might also include tools that build on top of the traditional stuff, like `rpm-ostree`. This is what you're dealing with on Fedora Silverblue, SteamOS, openSUSE MicroOS, etc. Also distinct from these but not particularly new are source-based package management systems, like - source-based Linux distro package managers incl. - emerge - paludis - sorcery - various ports systems, incl. - pkgsrc - Ravenports - FreeBSD Ports - Dragonfly BSD's DPorts - MacPorts - Homebrew but those aren't really in the mainstream of system-wide package management, at least from my Linux-centric perspective, so I don't usually mean them when I refer to 'traditional' or 'conventional' package managers without any other qualifiers. Anyway yeah, plain old openSUSE and Fedora are great choices if you don't want a declarative system or immutable Linux, and that is in part because zypper and dnf are best-in-class for their paradigm.
itsTyrion 4y ago
It’s been about 2 WEEKS since I had apt shoot itself in the foot and basically deadlock in a state where I can’t perform a repair, upgrade, downgrade or reinstall. Time to forcefeed dpkg everything apt and libc

mook 4y ago

FWIW, Fedora these days use dnf, which uses libsolv under the hood. https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/dnf/ https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/dnf/

pxc 4y ago
dnf has copied zypper's other innovations as well, like vendor change. It's also fully usable on openSUSE, as a replacement for zypper, if you so desire. :) dnf and zypper are the best of the 'old school' package managers, in my experience (and to my taste). If want traditional package management, you can't go wrong with either.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  what are you calling the new school?
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    Nix probably?
    - pxc 4y ago
      Yep, but I'd also count some package managers which have learned from Nix but chosen a slightly different path by relaxing the requirement of 'purity', or leaning harder on containerization features. Besides the ones I mentioned in my reply which is a sibling to yours, I think the package managers for Haiku and RedoxOS fall into this category (but I can't be sure! I've never used them, so my memory of how where work is likely to have gaps).
  - pxc 4y ago
    There isn't a single one, but off the top of my head, the following package managers have been used to meet the same need (building Linux distros) but use distinct and relatively new paradigms or techniques: - Guix, Nix - Distri - Luet (I'm personally partial to the 'functional' school, which means Nix and Guix. :) One might also count package managers that are designed for building large, multi-language distributions of software but have never been used to build a whole distro. In that case, you could also include - Spack - Denxi and finally you might also include tools that build on top of the traditional stuff, like `rpm-ostree`. This is what you're dealing with on Fedora Silverblue, SteamOS, openSUSE MicroOS, etc. Also distinct from these but not particularly new are source-based package management systems, like - source-based Linux distro package managers incl. - emerge - paludis - sorcery - various ports systems, incl. - pkgsrc - Ravenports - FreeBSD Ports - Dragonfly BSD's DPorts - MacPorts - Homebrew but those aren't really in the mainstream of system-wide package management, at least from my Linux-centric perspective, so I don't usually mean them when I refer to 'traditional' or 'conventional' package managers without any other qualifiers. Anyway yeah, plain old openSUSE and Fedora are great choices if you don't want a declarative system or immutable Linux, and that is in part because zypper and dnf are best-in-class for their paradigm.

itsTyrion 4y ago

It’s been about 2 WEEKS since I had apt shoot itself in the foot and basically deadlock in a state where I can’t perform a repair, upgrade, downgrade or reinstall. Time to forcefeed dpkg everything apt and libc