What's the difference between package manager and why are there so many?

Are they so different that it's justified to have so many different distributions? So far I guess that different package manager are the reason that divides the linux community. One may be on KDE and one on GNOME but they can use each other's packages but usually you are bound to one manager

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Imagine having only one option, and that option is dnf. I'm out. I don't want Linux anymore.
- Ok I'll bite. What's so bad about dnf? I would take it anyday over apt.
  
  Not much really. It is great, but slow as shit and makes me want to toss my computer across the room. I just want to install one tiny 5 kb package, I don't want you to take 10 minutes checking all the RPM fusions repos and go to the moon and back then install my package. No, just install the damn thing. I'll ask you when I need you to check that long list of repos. 😂
  
  Dnf-5 was/is supposed to be a big speed improvement, no?
  
  Not sure. I have fedora 38 in a VM and it's still very slow.
  
  Not targeted to be default until Fedora 41. So if you wanted to try it out you would have to install it your self.
  
  Ok then, I'll search it up and install it.
  
  Sweet I hope it really is better for you then!
  
  I actually did install it. I hate to judge it in a virtual machine, but I've noticed a small difference. It's still slow, but not as slow as the other one. Fun fact, the only reason why I don't use fedora is that I hate their installer. I have 3 drives on my PC, and I'm so scared that I'd mess things up and lose my photos/videos/games etc 😂 The installer is so confusing. I remember figuring it out once then just forgot it again.
  
  I custom install every time, partially to preserve my user data partition, partially because I don't like the defaults (I like mirroring my disks and leaving space to grow into later if I want)
  
  Same here, that's why I have 3 different drives in my PC, 512GB nvme ssd for root, 1TB SATA SSD for home, and 2 TB SATA SSD just for games/emulation and steam
  
  Thanks for the response. I anticipated "it's slow" but I guess that just doesn't bother me because otherwise I dig dnf/rpm over any other combo I've tried.
  
  For example - a one liner to identify all packages from a particular repo is trivial with dnf, huge pain with apt.
  
  I'm a pacman/yay guy myself. Haven't used apt for too long. Even when I run something with apt, I install nala

72 comments