7 ms·

Serious question, because I am admittedly ignorant to the plusses and minuses of the different package managers. If you're going to swap out: why not switch to

by tw04 12y ago

Serious question, because I am admittedly ignorant to the plusses and minuses of the different package managers. If you're going to swap out: why not switch to apt? What does apt lack that DNF is going to provide? This seems like one of those low hanging fruit where standardization across distributions would make sense.

lloydde 12y ago
Apt is part of a tool chain that is extreme Unix philosophy. With this we benefit from backwards compatibility and continuing to use our muscle memory, but it also means that if say you want to find out which uninstalled package provides a specific file it means installing another tool.
- frg0 12y ago
  at some point *hat could do us all a favor and remember that we're just humans.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - icebraining 12y ago
    How so? I don't think you can do that with apt alone, you need apt-file (which is a separate tool).
    - kasabali 12y ago
      Oh right. I misread your comment, sorry.
- XorNot 12y ago
  apt-file is pretty damn lightweight when you get to "another tool" stakes.
rwmj 12y ago
It would have been better to switch to zypper. Both dnf and zypper use a SAT solver for very fast depsolving. Yum and apt don't and both have very slow depsolving. Zypper also directly supports rpm, and would have unified the package managers on Fedora, OpenSUSE and the enterprise Linux distros RHEL and SUSE.
- baghira 12y ago
  As far as I can tell the fedora guys wrote libhawkey and dnf to reach some sort of middle ground, as switching to zypper would have implied breaking everything (i.e. all the scripts admins use, rewriting parts of anaconda, etc). The compatibility is not perfect, and in fact a fair amount of people complained (see some discussion on phoronix). As far as the parent post is concerned, to switch to apt would imply switching to deb, which would be a massive change. RPM is simply too different, both in positive (the possibility of changing target directory and of rolling back) and in negative (dependency specification is still rudimental compared to .deb, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNwNF19oFqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNwNF19oFqM). And as rwmj14 said, libsolv is better.
  - amyjess 12y ago
    For the record, apt doesn't always imply deb: apt-rpm exists, and it's used by a few distros, including PCLinuxOS.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    apt-rpm has been around for more than a decade, and was considered for Fedora back in the day (it lost out due to a combination of lack of multilib support back then, and considerations over complexity). Last time I used Fedora it was available in the repository and worked just fine - I always preferred it over yum, despite also preferring RPM over Deb.
    - baghira 12y ago
      I thought apt-rpm was basically dead, happy to read that it is still around. And yes, I reckon the second part of my comment was wrong, you can have apt on top of .deb .
stonogo 12y ago
The lower the stakes, the stronger the feelings. C.f. text editing.
- rwmj 12y ago
  Considering I spend probably half my time using a computer in an editor, I'd say the stakes couldn't be higher.
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  Given that the package manager is the backbone that makes the Linux distribution (in most cases), it's not low stakes at all.
  - CydeWeys 12y ago
    As long as all of the alternatives work, and they do, it is pretty low stakes. Realistically, how much difference does the choice between yum/dnf/apt-get really make to my everday life installing and upgrading packages? Very, very little.
- sytringy05 12y ago
  The classic problem of Bikeshedding - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality
exprL 12y ago
For a user, DNF is mostly just a quicker YUM. It still deals with RPMs and the UI is similar (at least for basic operations).
kasabali 12y ago
Because switching just the package manager will yield no benefit at all. Having apt as the common package manager among Debian derivatives is meaningful because those distributions get most of their packages from Debian, so they use not only the same package manager, but also same packaging format, same file system hierarchy, same package names/package splitting. All Fedora derivatives, OpenSUSE and Mandriva(?) would agree on using dnf but that would provide no significant benefit at all (other than reusing muscle memory).
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Most of APT packages' superiority comes less from the packaging format than the entire philosophy surrounding them, most especially in the case of Debian, Debian Policy. Quite simply, so long as I stay within distro, the quality of Debian packages greatly exceeds those of RPM packages (long-standing direct, multiple-instance observation of Debian, REHL/Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora, and Suse systems). Some of the benefit also derives from the packaging format itself. The ability to unpack DEBs using nothing but shell tools (busybox within a Debian system's pre-boot ramfs is sufficient and has been successfully used by me -- Red Hat loses in this instance by using a ramfs shell that's both 1) larger than Debian's dash and 2) doesn't offer interactive use -- it's a scripting-only shell, FML. Joey Hess at one time had a detailed comparison of various packaging systems. He's pulled it apparently due to political / fanboi bickering, which is a shame. He's author of 'alien', a tool for converting between packaging formats. But Policy (and fucking enforcing the fucking hell out of it) trumps. Source: 18 years' use of both distros and many other Linuxen. 30 years' experience on further Unixen.
darkstalker 12y ago
Everyone should switch to Portage. It's like a superset of every package manager.
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  No, it really isn't. Portage poorly solves, or neglects to solve, most of the problems dnf is intended to solve with yum, and is, on many fronts inferior to yum, as well.
- crististm 12y ago
  If portage/gentoo guys were not treating portage as if it was running on gazillion of GHz CPU, they would have a shot at making portage compete with other systems. Don't say it is the best. Not by any stretch. I feel ashamed that for the last ten years I could not find a kind word to the portage developers. For what is worth, they don't care.
- TylerE 12y ago
  You mean the better system that inspired portage, BSD Ports, right?
- tanderson92 12y ago
  You mean Paludis right (on Exherbo too and not Gentoo which is still stuck in the stone age)? Paludis does correct dependency resolution while Portage just pretends to.
- wtallis 12y ago
  The portage ebuild system for describing package dependencies and build procedures is awesome. The portage program for solving dependencies and building packages is mediocre at best—it's slow and too prone to not finding a solution even when the constraints of source compatibility are looser than binary compatibility. The gentoo portage repository of packages is clearly understaffed and orphaned packages are all too easy to run across. All three of those things have gotten better over the years, and I have little doubt that given the attention and effort that RedHat and Debian package managers get, portage could be a clear winner. But the portage we have now has too many pitfalls to be the best all-around choice.
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Ironically, package formats have already been standardized: it's RPM, as per the Linux Standard Base (LSB). Naturally no one fully obeys it, because LSB is a mediocre standard in general.

by tw04 12y ago

lloydde 12y ago

Apt is part of a tool chain that is extreme Unix philosophy. With this we benefit from backwards compatibility and continuing to use our muscle memory, but it also means that if say you want to find out which uninstalled package provides a specific file it means installing another tool.

frg0 12y ago
at some point *hat could do us all a favor and remember that we're just humans.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- icebraining 12y ago
  How so? I don't think you can do that with apt alone, you need apt-file (which is a separate tool).
  - kasabali 12y ago
    Oh right. I misread your comment, sorry.
XorNot 12y ago
apt-file is pretty damn lightweight when you get to "another tool" stakes.

rwmj 12y ago

It would have been better to switch to zypper. Both dnf and zypper use a SAT solver for very fast depsolving. Yum and apt don't and both have very slow depsolving. Zypper also directly supports rpm, and would have unified the package managers on Fedora, OpenSUSE and the enterprise Linux distros RHEL and SUSE.

baghira 12y ago
As far as I can tell the fedora guys wrote libhawkey and dnf to reach some sort of middle ground, as switching to zypper would have implied breaking everything (i.e. all the scripts admins use, rewriting parts of anaconda, etc). The compatibility is not perfect, and in fact a fair amount of people complained (see some discussion on phoronix). As far as the parent post is concerned, to switch to apt would imply switching to deb, which would be a massive change. RPM is simply too different, both in positive (the possibility of changing target directory and of rolling back) and in negative (dependency specification is still rudimental compared to .deb, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNwNF19oFqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNwNF19oFqM). And as rwmj14 said, libsolv is better.
- amyjess 12y ago
  For the record, apt doesn't always imply deb: apt-rpm exists, and it's used by a few distros, including PCLinuxOS.
- vidarh 12y ago
  apt-rpm has been around for more than a decade, and was considered for Fedora back in the day (it lost out due to a combination of lack of multilib support back then, and considerations over complexity). Last time I used Fedora it was available in the repository and worked just fine - I always preferred it over yum, despite also preferring RPM over Deb.
  - baghira 12y ago
    I thought apt-rpm was basically dead, happy to read that it is still around. And yes, I reckon the second part of my comment was wrong, you can have apt on top of .deb .

stonogo 12y ago

The lower the stakes, the stronger the feelings. C.f. text editing.

rwmj 12y ago
Considering I spend probably half my time using a computer in an editor, I'd say the stakes couldn't be higher.
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Given that the package manager is the backbone that makes the Linux distribution (in most cases), it's not low stakes at all.
- CydeWeys 12y ago
  As long as all of the alternatives work, and they do, it is pretty low stakes. Realistically, how much difference does the choice between yum/dnf/apt-get really make to my everday life installing and upgrading packages? Very, very little.
sytringy05 12y ago
The classic problem of Bikeshedding - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality

exprL 12y ago

For a user, DNF is mostly just a quicker YUM. It still deals with RPMs and the UI is similar (at least for basic operations).

kasabali 12y ago

Because switching just the package manager will yield no benefit at all. Having apt as the common package manager among Debian derivatives is meaningful because those distributions get most of their packages from Debian, so they use not only the same package manager, but also same packaging format, same file system hierarchy, same package names/package splitting. All Fedora derivatives, OpenSUSE and Mandriva(?) would agree on using dnf but that would provide no significant benefit at all (other than reusing muscle memory).

dredmorbius 12y ago
Most of APT packages' superiority comes less from the packaging format than the entire philosophy surrounding them, most especially in the case of Debian, Debian Policy. Quite simply, so long as I stay within distro, the quality of Debian packages greatly exceeds those of RPM packages (long-standing direct, multiple-instance observation of Debian, REHL/Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora, and Suse systems). Some of the benefit also derives from the packaging format itself. The ability to unpack DEBs using nothing but shell tools (busybox within a Debian system's pre-boot ramfs is sufficient and has been successfully used by me -- Red Hat loses in this instance by using a ramfs shell that's both 1) larger than Debian's dash and 2) doesn't offer interactive use -- it's a scripting-only shell, FML. Joey Hess at one time had a detailed comparison of various packaging systems. He's pulled it apparently due to political / fanboi bickering, which is a shame. He's author of 'alien', a tool for converting between packaging formats. But Policy (and fucking enforcing the fucking hell out of it) trumps. Source: 18 years' use of both distros and many other Linuxen. 30 years' experience on further Unixen.

darkstalker 12y ago

Everyone should switch to Portage. It's like a superset of every package manager.

SwellJoe 12y ago
No, it really isn't. Portage poorly solves, or neglects to solve, most of the problems dnf is intended to solve with yum, and is, on many fronts inferior to yum, as well.
crististm 12y ago
If portage/gentoo guys were not treating portage as if it was running on gazillion of GHz CPU, they would have a shot at making portage compete with other systems. Don't say it is the best. Not by any stretch. I feel ashamed that for the last ten years I could not find a kind word to the portage developers. For what is worth, they don't care.
TylerE 12y ago
You mean the better system that inspired portage, BSD Ports, right?
tanderson92 12y ago
You mean Paludis right (on Exherbo too and not Gentoo which is still stuck in the stone age)? Paludis does correct dependency resolution while Portage just pretends to.
wtallis 12y ago
The portage ebuild system for describing package dependencies and build procedures is awesome. The portage program for solving dependencies and building packages is mediocre at best—it's slow and too prone to not finding a solution even when the constraints of source compatibility are looser than binary compatibility. The gentoo portage repository of packages is clearly understaffed and orphaned packages are all too easy to run across. All three of those things have gotten better over the years, and I have little doubt that given the attention and effort that RedHat and Debian package managers get, portage could be a clear winner. But the portage we have now has too many pitfalls to be the best all-around choice.

vezzy-fnord 12y ago

Ironically, package formats have already been standardized: it's RPM, as per the Linux Standard Base (LSB). Naturally no one fully obeys it, because LSB is a mediocre standard in general.