Linux distributions use different package management software. Most commercial distributions use the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM). These include Red Hat, Fedora, SuSE, and Mandrake. Debian uses the Advanced Package Tool (APT). For small devices, IPKG is often used. Gentoo Linux uses something called emerge
.
The drawback of RPMs has been that figuring out the necessary dependencies was left to the user. If package A needed package B, you would only find out when you tried to install package A, and it refused because you didn't have package B. Once you downloaded package B and tried to install both of them, it might complain about package C.
On Debian, you can use apt
to figure out these dependencies for you. On Fedora, you can use yum
do to a more automated RPM-based install. There is also apt-rpm
, which brings the apt
command structure from Debian to RPM-based systems. YAST for SuSE automatically handles dependencies for you as well.
Below we will...