Package Managers

A Package Manager (or package-management system) is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner.

Depending on your machine configuration and your development toolchain, you may have need of all sorts of package managers. Each package manager serves different needs or operating systems. Some of it is built-in like Windows Update. Others you may have to download and configure yourself. Here are some common ones.

A cheat sheet for most major Linux package managers can be found at DistroWatch.¹⁾

The two most common package formats on most of the mainstream distros are .deb (used with apt and aptitude package managers) and .rpm (used with dnf, yum, and other package managers). Some Linux distros have unique package formats and accompanying package managers all to themselves. Everything you need to know is on the cheat sheet linked above.

Flatpak is a type of package manager that packages the application and all of its dependencies inside a container. In the Linux world, some applications are just gonna be better off deployed automatically with Flatpak instead of the OS's built in package manager. Some distros now come with Flatpak preinstalled. You can even use a bash alias to have both your system updates and Flatpak updates go off with a single update command.

Snap is a similar, more frustrating version of Flatpak, bundled with Ubuntu. Luckily, if it is on your system, it is easy to replace with Flatpak.

While 95% of the software most Linux end users are ever gonna need, can be found in pre-configured form in the right package manager repositories, there is a downside: Not all of the pre-packaged versions of the software in these repositories is up-to-date. Sometimes it is, but in many cases you will have to find the source and compile it yourself to get the latest patches.

In the smartphone and tablet ecosystem, Android and iOS have their own bundled package managers, which take the form of the built-in update services and rudely gatekept app stores. Short of hacking the hell out of your device, what you see is what you get.

Windows and MacOS have their own built-in update services that function as the core package managers for the system, providing all the first-party software. Recent versions of these operating systems now include smartphone-like app stores, kept updated with the rest of the system software. Further applications (like third-party web browsers) have their own built-in update services on top of this. Other third-party applications you may have to keep track of updates yourself.

Various programming and scripting languages have their own package management suites as well: