Yum vs Apt vs Zypper

[SkyHiRider]

What is the actual difference between these three.
From the user perspective, I've heard that you can't do apt purge *app* with Yum, as there will always be some conf files left. And I've also heard that Zypper does not download all files at once like Yum or Apt but instead downloads one, installs it, then downloads two, installs two and so on... so in case your net goes down you can end up with broken dependencies.
So what say you, savvy Linux IT people?

[next9]

Zypper is the fastest and most powefull package manager front-end today. It uses SAT solver, wich is the best available dependency solution. It has many powerfull features Apt simply lacks like complete management within CLI. For example it is impossible configure/add/remove/enable/disable repository using APT command. Using Zypper it is simple task. Zypper has also the best informational output in nice tabular format, Yum is also great in this area. Zypper has also the best syntax format. You can run "zypper xxx" command in full or short format. It is far better to write "zypper in" instead of "zypper install". Almost every zypper command has such shortcut.

On the other hand Apt dependency solver is almost idiotic, and in addition it does not treat donwgrade as an option. Apt information output is chaotic mess and Apt syntax seems lika a bad joke at all. It is not a single tool, but some group of Apt-??? utilities completed without any sense. For example if You search package in package cache, you run Apt-cache command: "Apt-cache search". But when you want to refresh cache, you run Apt-get command: "Apt-get update". WTF???

Yum is far behind Zypper, but still much better than Apt, not because of features, but because it's usability. Yum has great informational output and syntax.


PS: Zypper can download packages in advance and install them at once as apt or yum, it is just not the default behaviour (from historical reasons) Open the configuration file /etc/zypp/zypp.conf and set:

commit.downloadMode = DownloadInAdvance

Since Opensuse 11.3, this behaviour will be default.

If you miss some feature in Zypper, it will probably be added soon. Although Zypper is the youngest project, it has themost features today and it is still under heavy development. Apt has not changed for years.

[SkyHiRider]

Thanks for the reply! Didn't know much about Zypper but I too find using apt from the command line a bit annoying, as it is split into many commands. I could search in Yum easily, while finding the correct command in apt took some time.

Does zypper have some kind of version control like the gnome devs use (don't remember the package manager name), that you can create sort of a system snapshot of packages so you can fall back a few steps if something broke(something like a restore points on Windows)?

[deanjo]

Thanks for the reply! Didn't know much about Zypper but I too find using apt from the command line a bit annoying, as it is split into many commands. I could search in Yum easily, while finding the correct command in apt took some time.

Does zypper have some kind of version control like the gnome devs use (don't remember the package manager name), that you can create sort of a system snapshot of packages so you can fall back a few steps if something broke(something like a restore points on Windows)?

Zypper is adding a function like that utilizing btrfs. I believe there is an article on Phoronix on it.

[Laughing1]

Zypper is adding a function like that utilizing btrfs. I believe there is an article on Phoronix on it.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=ODI2Ng

Being worked on for openSUSE 11.3, which is due for release in July, is snapshot/rollback support for Btrfs in a similar fashion to Red Hat's implementation with Fedora 13. A Novell customer is pushing for this capability whereby a Btrfs copy-on-write snapshot is created by libzypp / zypper before a commit happens that changes a package's state. There would then be an exposed interface to revert to an earlier snapshot should something go awry.

[...]

[LinuxID10T]

Apt has supercow powers!!!

[fnargh]

At at least a superficial level, you might like this overview of package management commands.

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=package-management

[SkyHiRider]

That is an amazing link, many thanks!

[darkphoenix22]

They should probably extend aptitude to be able to add repos with a single command.

Right now its:

add-apt-repository foo

Being able to remove repos with a single command would be nice too.

[darkphoenix22]

Interesting set of scripts/extensions I found that would be useful for Ubuntu users.

Greasemonkey script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/47591
Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11731/ (A bit out of date)
Chromium extension:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/oljmaangfgmmokjpnojhfblppgeijikp

These scripts/extensions turn "sudo apt-get install" commands on web pages into "apturls" you can click. Instead of needing to copy-and-paste the commands into a terminal, the "apturls" will just run an application to install the specified packages.