Package management

See w:Package manager for background.

w:Ian Murdock has commented that package management is "the single biggest advancement Linux has brought to the industry", that it blurs the boundaries between operating system and applications, and that it makes it "easier to push new innovations [...] into the marketplace and [...] evolve the OS".

Linux

• Apt, Synaptic and Dpkg are all found on Debian and derivatives such as Ubuntu to manage packages.
• Yum is based on the RPM format and found on RedHat and derivatives such as CentOS and Fedora

Others

Some of the other package managers that you may come across

• Homebrew The missing package manager for OS X
• homebrew cask extends Homebrew