Penguin
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There are several main 'flavours' of PackageManagementTool in use in various LinuxDistributions?. These include:

rpm
Redhat Package Manager. Obviously, RedHat uses this, but Mandrake and a handful of others do as well.
dpkg
This is Debian's package manager. Knoppix, Progeny and other LinuxDistributions? are "Debian-based".
.tgz
Slackware uses TarBalls that include pre-and post install scripts.
ports
This is the source based PackageManagementTool that BSD uses. Several LinuxDistributions? use a similar idea.
portage
Gentoo's version of source based PackageManagement, driven by a tool called emerge.
spells
SorcererLinux? has a 'spell book' approach to source based PackageManagement.

Frontends to these tools include:

up2date
a front-end to rpm provided by RedHat. You get to use it on one machine per user free, and can pay for the right to use it on more machines. It's probably worth it for most users, as it makes installing new software and keeping up with upgrades really easy.
apt
one of the best tools around that traditionally wraps dpkg, although there is a version that works for rpm. It was the first front-end to nicely handle dependencies: apt-get install foo will automatically download and install not only foo, but also any unfulfilled dependencies foo may have.

I personally have used RedHat (rpm), Debian (dpkg / apt), and Gentoo ('portage' -- emerge). Of the three, RedHat rates worst for me, because I never really used up2date and so started getting annoyed with dependency hell. Debian and Gentoo are about the same in terms of ease of installation of a new application / upgrading packages, however Gentoo takes an age longer due to having to compile everything from source. --DanielLawson


Still that can hardly be construed as a drawback since the people who choose Gentoo do so precisely because it compiles everything from source. Certainly, it may have been a drawback for you, but that doesn't make it one in the general case. Everyone will have to examine their needs themselves. --AristotlePagaltzis