Software Package Manager is a command line utility that makes it possible for the user to install, update or configure packages on the system. There are different package managers that are used in the system and among them, Yum and APT are notable ones. These two package managers follow the simplest way to install packages on a system. However, they are different from each other.
Follow this article to find difference between YUM and APT.
What is APT?
APT stands for Advanced Packaging Tool, a command line tool which you can use to install, update, upgrade and configure software packages on Linux system from the source repository. When you install any package using APT, all the dependencies automatically get installed.
The following is the syntax to install a package using the apt command in Linux.
sudo apt install <package_name>To update packages using apt, follow the below-given command:
sudo apt updateWhat is YUM?
YUM stands for Yellowdog Updater Modified, a package manager tool for RPM-based distributions like RHEL and CentOS and more. YUM package manager installs packages from .rpm packages and software repositories. It manages the packages from system repository and automatically installs the packages dependencies with the package.
You can use the following syntax to install a package through yum.
sudo yum install <package_name>To update packages using yum, follow the below-given command:
sudo yum updateYUM VS APT
YUM and APT both are package managers and serve the same purpose of managing the installation, upgradation, and configurations of different packages but the below mentioned are some differences they both have:
| Package Manager | APT | YUM |
| Used in | Debian, Lubuntu, Kubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros | Red-Hat-based distros such as CentOS, RHEL, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Rocky Linux |
| Supported Installation Package Format | .deb files | .rpm files |
| Command Options | The most used apt options are: update upgrade install remove purge list search | The most used yum options are: install remove search info update |
| Configuration Files | options organized into functional groups, etc/apt/apt.conf file organized in a tree | YUM options can be set with global and repository-specific effects, /etc/yum.conf file with two sections |
| Change Rollbacks | You can roll back the changes to the specific version | YUM allows any modifications to be rolled back |
| GUI Front-End Support | Nala and Synaptic | Yumex and PackageKit |
| Upgrades | The sudo apt upgrade command is used to upgrade all installed packages | The installed packages can be upgraded via yum update command |