A package manager is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing software packages on your system. It simplifies the management of software dependencies and ensures that the software you install is compatible with your system.
While many commercial software comes with its own installer, and you should use it when necessary, package managers are particularly useful for managing development tools, libraries, and utilities that are commonly used in programming and data analysis.
As for Windows 11, winget is pre-installed. You can use winget to install, update, and manage software packages on your Windows system.
macOS does not come with a built-in package manager, but you can install Homebrew, a popular package manager for macOS.
Ubuntu, Debian, and their derivatives use apt as the package manager.
In our lab, here are some common packages that we install using package managers
git: Version control systemgit-lfs: Git Large File Storagecmake: Build systemThese are some cases where you should not use a package manager
omz: Oh My Zshminiconda: Python distributionnvm: Node Version Manager