urpmi vs apt

[null]

I have never set-up or used urpmi, but I have used apt quite a bit, and I really love it. I haven't really used apt with synaptic, I prefer the normal old cmd line way.

 

I set-up and used apt mostly on my RH 9 machine. That machine now has FC 1 on it. I want to put a new box together and put one of the new distros on it - mdk 10 official, or suse 9.1, or whatever. Since I am familiar with apt, I am leaning towards a distro that can use apt.

 

I haven't really read up on urpmi, but according to a recent Linux magazine (Linux Magazine a few months ago):

 

urpmi is OK, but it is no apt....

 

that's what the article said (an article all about apt). The author was familiar with both apt & urpmi, but was of the opinion that apt was considerably better. He did not go into the reasons why.

 

I was interested in some comments by people here who have used both.

 

thanks in advance

[tyme]

I've used both, and honestly don't see a difference. but for some reason i'm just one of those people who rarely has problems w/urpmi.

[bvc]

Let me clear this up for ya ;)

Apt is only better at dist-upgrade/s. The reason apt seems better all around is devel/pkger's/maintainer's, not the software itself. That is what people fail to understand. They think if urpmi fails a few times installing something in it's sources and apt never has so apt is better. That is wrong. Stop and think about why urpmi failed.

Either a needed pkg was not available in the source, and should have been, which is resolved by adding more sources (which urpmi is good at and apt is not as good, IMO). Or, the pkg/s/or a pkg didn't have the right dependencies put in them to please all the rest. Both, human/devel/maintainer/pkger errors. Not the software. Not to mention the pkg tree's. Debian's are massive. Mandrakes are not. Is this bad? Not necessarily bad just more inconvenient and is what makes it easier for devel to goof. Just add more sources. I have seen apt break a few installs when too many sources are used. I've never had that problem with mandrake/urpmi.

 

Mandrake? Most definately stick with urpmi. Apt with mandrake has all but died. You can use rh rpm's but be prepared to distupgrade the entire sys and risk loosing it all.

[null]

that was what I was looking for, thanks. That's why I pointed out in the first post that I had not used urpmi, so I was not dissing it.

 

I vaguely remember trying to set up urpmi (by following the easy urpmi threads in this forum) back when I had mdk 9.0, but I guess I never got it going. I thought the set-up for apt on my RH 9 machine was very easy - of course, I had the magazine article to refer to.

[bvc]

can't get any easier than the Media Manager in MCC>Software Management ;)

[null]

I don't know what that is. I didn't have mdk 9.0 on my machine very long, and didn't really check into it that much.

 

I remember alot of questions and threads on this board from people trying to set up urpmi, and always being directed to some website called easy urpmi or something.

[bvc]

yes, you can do that. I did.....once. All you need is a mdk mirror with hdlist and there's no need for easyurpmi. It's good for those without experience though.....sometimes, but they don't update their links enough IMO. Besides, if you go and use what everyone else uses then download speed will be effected. Hunt down a mirror yourself and speed increases dramatically. ;)

[capnkirby]

Used both, the biggest difference I see is that Apt has pretty GUI's to work with if you wish, where I've never heard of such a thing for urpmi. In my experience there is really no benefit of one over the other in function or success, only in package volume; there seems to me much more available for Apt than urpmi and in a much wider variety of types. I've found Doom in Apt for example, but not for urpmi.

Just my observations.....

 

Capn

[null]

that may be what the author meant when he remarked that apt was "better" than urpmi. Maybe he wasn't actually comparing the progs themselves, but the usability of the programs.

 

I just installed apt & synaptic on my FC1 machine today. I installed a few things with apt on the cmd line, and I tried out synaptic also. I don't like synaptic at all. I think just typing a couple of words in a terminal is easier than figuring out what buttons to click.

 

By the way, a linux book I am currently reading, when discussing installing programs, and on the apt section - the book discusses the cmd line way, and then the synaptic way. Then the author says "after you try apt at the cmd line you will probably never want to do it that way again..." What ? How hard it is to type apt-get install progname?

[colnago]

Here are the real apples and oranges: urpmi is better to use on mandrake 10 systems, apt is better to use on debian systems.

[bvc]

Used both, the biggest difference I see is that Apt has pretty GUI's to work with if you wish, where I've never heard of such a thing for urpmi.

sure you have at least heard of them ;)

Everything in MCC>Software Management

are gui front ends to urpmi

 

Install

Remove

Updates

Media Manager

 

oh yeah, debian, not apt, debian has a lot more pkgs. Apt on mandrake has very few....making it useless on mandrake.

[null]

ok, I might as well ask this here. I installed apt on my FC1 machine yesterday. I got apt at freshrpms.net. My etc/apt/sources.list file has only one uncommented source for fedora core 1. When I type apt-get upgrade, it works for a few seconds, and then says segmentation fault and returns to the root prompt.

 

what causes this ??

[Gowator]

My 2c ....

 

The main difference is over server packages. APT is way ahead on these because it allows prompting of the user...and logically decisions. Of course, if you dont know the answers to these quesitons at the time your stuffed :D

 

So it really is apples and oranges and use an orange juicer for juicing oranges etc. For non-server stuff there is little difference except the packages are a bit easier to understand in urpmi, if only becuase their is less choices ....

I often find myself choosing to apt-get something that I know the RPM name of... instead of wading through the deb package lists.

 

IMHO the GUI for URPMI is worse than useless unless you alias urpmi to urpmi --noclean. it constantly amazes me that the default action is to delete the packages after install.... otherwise you need to copy the files from /var/cache/urpmi (or similar) BEFORE it finishes and deletes them..presuming you want to keep the same versions on all machines etc.

 

Also the NEW (LOL 9.0+) GUI sucks where it seperates updates from new from removing... I much preferred all in one place.... or use kpackage and then use the cli to add/remove etc.

[DragonMage]

One thing I like about the urpmi gui that is missing from synaptic apt gui.. a more powerful search engine. The problem with synaptic that I have is that I cannot search (at least easily) part of a name of rpm.. or package in rpm, only the first few letters that match.

[null]

what about the segmentation fault ? (see 3 posts above this)

 

Maybe I need to reinstall apt, or maybe I messed up my etc/apt/sources.list file (I got into it with vi, and then did no changes and closed the terminal window. Then later I got into it again with gedit and inserted another repository line under the one that was already there. I copied & pasted the line direct from the website, cuz the site showed you exactly what to add to your sources.list file, so its probably not a typo.

 

Maybe I messed something up by editing the file. I think apt worked ok before I did that. :unsure:

 

sure is easy to break stuff.