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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What's the difference between package manager and why are there so many? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Are they so different that it's justified to have so many different distributions? So far I guess that different package manager are the reason that divides the linux community. One may be on KDE and one on GNOME but they can use each other's packages but usually you are bound to one manager

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Some differences can be explained. Pacman was created after the Debian package manager (I guess that because Debian is older than Arch) . It is justified because Pacman is faster than Apt. But its too much work to replace Apt by Pacman comparing to the benefits.

But in some cases I don't know why. As instance I wonder why a distro, such as Void, created its own package manager instead of using the Alpine one. If Alpine is younger than Void, invert the sentence of course.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Void was created just for testing xbps. Without xbps there would be no Void.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've yet to play with void. Is there anything cool/special about xbps?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It is extremely fast and simple. Also, it has its own "aur", called xbps-src. But nowadays void is not just xbps, it is also defined by runit (which is also extremely fast and simple) and minimalist dependencies (you will have to manually install many things, that other distributions ship reinstalled, in case you need them. By the way, if you prefer GUI package manager, there is octoxbps (not an advantage of xbps, but you might want that when you try void linux).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Nice! I'm coming from arch with systemd so it'll be interesting to play around with runit too. Definitely going to give it a tinker.

Thanks for the info!