Software on Linux comes in packages. These packages contain all the files
that belong to a particular application, such as a web browser, word processor,
and games. Linux systems use shared libraries, which are shared by multiple
applications. Most packages on Linux are not self-contained, but depend on shared
files.
The graphical software manager on most Linux distributions is GNOME-Software, also
called Software (Figure A-1). Software is well organized, with categories
and good search capabilities.
Figure A-1. GNOME-Software
Package Management Commands
Every Linux distribution uses three types of software management commands:
A package manager, which manages only single packages. Fedora and openSUSE use
the rpm package manager, Ubuntu uses dpkg.
A dependency-resolving package manager. Fedora uses dnf, openSUSE uses
zypper,
and Ubuntu has apt. Dependency-resolving package managers ensure that any
dependencies for a particular package are automatically resolved. For example,
the gedit text editor has a long list of dependencies, as this example for apt
illustrates:
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