LinuxQuestions.org - YUM vs APT-GET

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- - YUM vs APT-GET (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/yum-vs-apt-get-189386/)

Well, I'm back. It's been about a year. My redhat 9 machine became my DOS box (for old-school gaming) and has now become my Fedora Core 2 box (as I have obtained a dos era del from eBay.)

The last time I installed linux I had a larger drive and I installed X and KDE and had some fun with it. I found out quite quickly that I really wasn't learning much. Using Xwindows allows you to configure almost everything through GUI menus and that's too much like windows for me--to easy.

So this time I installed it on my machine without X so I'm doing eveything in the shell. I have set up the computer to connect to my LAN, and I have configured my hostname and done a few other little things. I'm still getting used to VI.

Well, long story long, I have a couple questions.

I have read in some random posts here and there that people have jacked-up thier linux machines using apt-get. I was wodering if YUM was a better alternative? I remember how easy it was to update my Redhat using up2date but I was trying to find a way to automate this process in the shell without me having to manually ftp all the RPMs.

Are there clear advantages to using either one? What should I watch out for? Does fedora install YUM or Apt-get by default? If you know the url for an RPM can I specify it when installing it?

Like : rpm -i h**p://ww.whatever.com/apt-get.rpm

Thanks guys and gals (<- yeah right ;) )

If you really want to learn and want to have a good package system at the same time, why don't you try Gentoo and the gentoo portage? The primary reason for me to install gentoo was that I wanted to learn. Now is my favourite desktop. :)

I also have a gateway/firewall/server (an old cyrix 199MHz) running gentoo.

I think that ap-get download the dependencies you need to install the package and yum not. But apt-get is more difficult to configure properly than yum

Thanks for the help guys. Does anyone have any anecdotal knowlege of what works better? Can I specify a URL when using the RPM command to update a file? Thanks!

i use apt-get from the console and am quite happy with it. you specify which rpm repositories you want it to use by adding them to /etc/apt/sources.list. there are also ways of specifying which version you want to install over another, perhaps newer buggy version, or installing from a particular repository. i recommend it, though i don't have the experience with yum, so i can't say that it is better. i liked it enough not to look elsewhere. from the apt man page:

Quote:

A specific version of a package can be selected for installation by
following the package name with an equals and the version of the pack-
age to select. This will cause that version to be located and selected
for install. Alternatively a specific distribution can be selected by
following the package name with a slash and the version of the distri-
bution or the Archive name (stable, testing, unstable).

hope this helps.

The Gentoo portage and the emerge command is very similiar to apt-get in some ways. You also add to a file the url of the mirrors of the gentoo portage repository. You also use a simple command from a console to install aplications. Here's an example:

Let's install the game Scorch 3D. I knew about this game from a friend of mine. I've played it some years ago in MS-DOS and it was 2D ;)

Let's assume I already have the url of the portage mirror configured.

I start by searching for the correct package name:

Code:

delphis root # emerge search scorch 

Searching...  

[ Results for search key : scorch ]

[ Applications found : 2 ]

 

*  games-strategy/scorched3d

      Latest version available: 37.2

      Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]

      Size of downloaded files: 18,842 kB

      Homepage:    http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/

      Description: Multi-player tank battle in 3D (OpenGL)

      License:    GPL-2



*  games-strategy/xscorch

      Latest version available: 0.2.0

      Latest version installed: 0.2.0

      Size of downloaded files: 799 kB

      Homepage:    http://chaos2.org/xscorch/

      Description: clone of the classic DOS game, 'Scorched Earth'

      License:    GPL-2



delphis root #

Ok. The output shows scorched3d (the game I want to install) and xscorch (another game that I already have is you can see) Now that I know the correct of the package I want to install (games-strategy/scorched3d) let's install it:

Code:

delphis root # emerge scorched3d

The package will now be downloaded and installed. If it needs to be compiled (most packages in the gentoo portage need to be compiled) it will also compile the package. A few minutes later the game is ready to be played :D

I don't know if you can do that just try it, but i think you couldn't. And to install a rmp is better to use -Uvh options (rpm -Uvh apt-get.rpm).

I have used apt and yum on my fc1 box. apt seems to be the only one I need though. As far as being easy to configure, all I did was install the copy I got from http://ayo.freshrpms.net and it works fine.

Well, I played around with Yum (since it was already installed) and it works great. Thanks for all the help!

There is a comparison of yum and apt here.

Awesome! Thanks. This board (and it's members) rule!

I'm beginning to see the difference here. apt-get will allow you to aquire third party apps. YUM is for official disto stuff only.

Not true. You just need to point your yum.conf file to the "un-official" servers to get the "un-official" stuff. I haven't used apt yet although I may be willing to try. Yum is pretty good but FC2 has seemed plagued with down-servers and unset yum header files that can make yum work tough. On FC1, I was very happy with yum.