# Apt - Debian's Killer App

In [SUSE, Fedora or Debian for sys admins: A closer look][1] Tom
Adelstein says that in doing research for an upcoming book, he found
that most Linux sysamdins prefer Debian. The reason? Apt.

> Overwhelmingly, system administrators preferred apt-get for
> adding, removing and updating their servers. We also discovered
> that system admins added ports of apt-get to Fedora and SUSE. So
> much for yast -i. The preferred Debian administration utility
> drove people who used the non-commercial distributions to Debian.

I have to say I agree - I've used Debian for years and prefer it for
everyday use over other Linux distros or BSD systems. The
combination of dpkg/apt and the related Aptitude/Synaptic are at
once easy to use for the most common sysadmin activities of update
and install, but offer plenty of features for advanced use. While
[RPM][2] and [dpkg ][3]are pretty much equivalent in functionality,
Apt offers many more features than yum, including [package pinning
and the ability to do major system upgrades][4]. I also find yum to
be rather slow when compared to Apt.

I'll add some thought on the various BSD's, too - [FreeBSD's binary
packages system][5] is pretty easy to use, as is NetBSD's
[pkgsrc][6], but still both lack features when compared to Apt. The
BSD's adherence to a unified system of kernel/userland makes it
impossible to upgrade between major OS versions without going
through a formal installation procedure, while Debian allows you to
do it with two commands - you can even keep your old kernel with the
new userland if you want. [OpenBSD always recommends using the
installer's upgrade option][7], with [plenty of manual labor both
before and afterwards][8].

There are other reasons to use Debian, too, like sticking to Free
Software ideals, security, and ease of administration, but package
management with Apt seems to be Debian's "killer feature" that keeps
people coming back.

## Comments

**[Joe](#99 "2006-04-08 12:28:00"):** Apt is definitely the best
part of Debian. I'll sometimes have friendly jabs with friends about
distributions and someone will always talk about Debians lack of
updates (which is no longer true these days). I can always reply to
that with how great apt is and everyone agrees.

**[G-Fresh](#100 "2008-01-11 18:36:00"):** I used Debian for a
couple of years, and when I tried other distros I always missed
apt. However, after having used Archlinux' pacman the last year I
can't say I miss it at all. Pacman rocks! :)

[1]: http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/56196/index.html
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060618024834/http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/drafts/rpm-guide-en/
[3]: http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2005/12/concise-apt-get-dpkg-primer-for-new.html
[4]: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-apt-get.en.html
[5]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060721223921/http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/packages-using.html
[6]: http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/software/packages.html
[7]: http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#BldBinary
[8]: http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade38.html
.