You might be surprised to learn that all are nothing more than plain old archive files (like.

The primary difference between these systems is how they install and maintain apps. Gentoo Linux uses a system called Portage, and Arch Linux uses nothing but tarballs (.tar files). Red Hat, CentOS, and Fedora all use the rpm system (.rpm files), while Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, and Ubuntu use dpkg (.deb files). The two most common package management systems are from Red Hat and Debian. What is a package management system?Ī package management system is comprised of sets of tools and file formats that are used together to install, update, and uninstall Linux apps. Every Linux distribution comes with a package management system, but they are not all the same. All Linux apps are distributed as packages, which are nothing more than files associated with a package management system. The most common method of installing apps from the command line is through software repositories (a place where software is stored) using what's called a package manager. I have been a Linux user for roughly 25 years, and time and time again I find myself going back to the command line to install my apps. This includes installing applications on a Linux machine via the command line. If you use Linux for any amount of time, you'll soon learn there are many different ways to do the same thing.

Linux install deb command line