yum v.s. apt/synaptic

In the October issue of Linux Magazine there are separate articles on how to use yum and apt.

RPM has become the standard for package formats and is specified in the Linux Base System standard. RPM provides for a database that records the installed rpm packages and has the capability to show what packages have been installed, but does not show what packages are available to be installed. Also, while showing dependency problems, RPM does not automatically resove these problems by downloading and installing needed packages. In addition, RPM does not have a gui front-end. THere are some third-party front-ends such as up2date but none have really caught on with the user public.

YUM which comes from the yellow dog distro and APT which comes from the debian distro both have a large following and have each been proted to the RPM format. Each works with a repository (a place that holds rpm files and a directory of what's in the rpm files) and can show what is available for download, what can be updated, and so forth in addition to what is installed. There is no generally accepted gui front end for YUM, but there is for APT (synaptic).

Both pacages are good, but I think that APT/SYNAPTIC is more mature. It will be interesting to see which gains prominance.