Package Management

npaladin2000 · #1 25th August 2005, 07:54 AM

Which one you think is the best shot right now?

Incidentally, the entry for "SmartPM and work on a GUI" should actually read BETTER GUI, since the one that comes with it...well, it looks almost as good as Yumex. Which, BTW, isn't that good.

imdeemvp · #2 25th August 2005, 07:59 AM

Can you be more specific?

npaladin2000 · #3 25th August 2005, 07:59 AM

it's a poll. Gimme time to finish writing it

Personally, I'm a bit torn. I've always trusted APT. Synaptic is the greatest thing since fire was invented. SmartPM looks exciting too, but is still in the early stages. Since yum is written in Python, I might actually be able to understand the code and write a better frontend for it, since all of the current ones kinda suck a bit (The best is Kyum, but I hate KDE).

nephila · #4 25th August 2005, 11:49 AM

Actually, nothing beats emerge on gentoo, but FC4 uses RPM instead ;( which means mayhem with yum!

imdeemvp · #5 26th August 2005, 01:51 AM

Some poeple say YAST is the best other dont think so. I dont know much about gentoo but I think yum handles pretty good all my needs and dependencies.

Jman · #6 26th August 2005, 09:33 PM

Package manager flamewars, horray!!!

**Finalzone** · #7 26th August 2005, 10:21 PM

Neither Apt/Synaptic nor Smart handle multilib package i.e 32/64bits.
Autopackage is not designed to replace the whole package manager for distro (it never meant to be anyway).
./configure , make make install is good when someone is creating an application.
yumex is a good frontend for newcomers
kyum and gyum are good for end users
yum is the default package manager for Fedora.

tomcat · #8 26th August 2005, 11:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jman

Package manager flamewars, horray!!!

ROFL

I voted for yum cli. No wonder as I always prefer to use the cli with any package manager.

npaladin2000 · #9 27th August 2005, 03:31 AM

The CLI is great for quickie installs of a single app, but if you don't know what you want to install, or you want to queue a ton of programs to install and then walk away, a GUI is SOO much better.

tomcat · #10 27th August 2005, 10:09 AM

Hmmm... after some years with Linux, I do know in most cases what I want to install.

Thetargos · #11 1st September 2005, 10:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Finalzone

yum is the default package manager for Fedora.

Hmm... Nope... I would have to disagree there... YUM is actually the update agent in Fedora, it (fortunately) can install software too, but only if you get it off the network, given its default behaviour making it recognize local media (especially CD-Roms) requires some tweaking.

RPM is the default package mnager for Fedora, for which YUM is actually a frontend, or higher level UI, in the end, yum has to call rpm to manipulate the packages

As for the poll:

Didn't see good old `rpm [OPTIONS] package` formula up there...

However, for me, it must certainly has to be yum in CLI mode. The GUI frontends i've seen, while good, are not as flexible (IMO) as the CLI one...

Thetargos · #12 1st September 2005, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by npaladin2000

The CLI is great for quickie installs of a single app, but if you don't know what you want to install, or you want to queue a ton of programs to install and then walk away, a GUI is SOO much better.

Hmm... I do not fully agree... There's always `yum search`

A bit cumbersome, since you may have to:

Code:

yum search [your_keyword] > output.txt && less output.txt

That way you avoid the buffer in the CLI, and make the output browseable (since you could make search within the results

). Still, this implies a bit of work

npaladin2000 · #13 1st September 2005, 10:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thetargos

Hmm... I do not fully agree... There's always `yum search`

A bit cumbersome, since you may have to:

Code:

yum search [your_keyword] > output.txt && less output.txt

That way you avoid the buffer in the CLI, and make the output browseable (since you could make search within the results

). Still, this implies a bit of work

Yeah, and by the time you've started a terminal, typed that out and actually gotten to your less display, you could have started gnome-yum, typed in the search terms, saw what you wanted, and queued it up

CLIs are good for some things, but GUIs are nice and strong in other areas too. Those of you browsing this forum with Lynx need to get a life

Thetargos · #14 1st September 2005, 11:08 AM

LOL I do not browse using lynks or elinks

I can't deny the usefulness of a GUI based client, however haven't one as flexible/solid as the CLI client, more so for YUM. However I think the other way around about a GUI based client and the CLI one. For tasks such as updates, I'd rather use the CLI since it is actually faster, for the occasional install, the GUI is invaluable, though.

defkewl · #15 1st September 2005, 08:29 PM

IMHO apt doesn't work as good in fedora as it is in debian.
So I'll say yum works better for fedora.