Package Management in Linux

Things on this page are fragmentary and immature notes/thoughts of the author. Please read with your own judgement!

There are many different ways to install packages in Linux.

1. Build from source.

2. Pre-built binaries.

3. Use distribution specific tools. For example,

   • Debian, Ubuntu Series

   • Fedora: dnf

   Notice that Atomic Linux distributions have their own version of package managing tools. For example,

   • Fedora Atomic: rpm-ostree

   • AerynOS: moss

4. Homebrew and Nix are 2 popular package management tools for Linux when you do not have the root permission. Homebrew is preferred to Nix for multiple reasons.

   • Homebrew works for both macOS and Linux. For people who have already been using Homebrew on macOS, there’s no learning effort at all.

   • Homebrew has more packages.

5. Use cross‐platform and dependency‐free app formats, e.g., FlatPak and AppImage . For the difference between FlatPak and AppImage, please refer to What are the differences between snaps, appimage, flatpak and others? .

6. Software management tools in Linux distributions. This is usually just a GUI for FlatPak or snap. However, it has integration with the desktop environment so that you don’t have to start flatpk / snap apps using command line.

RedHat¶

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/package-management-basics-apt-yum-dnf-pkg

https://pkgs.org/