When would yum be of use to an Ubuntu user?

Question

My understanding is that yum, and the rpm system, is only useful on distributions such as Red Hat, Fedora and CentOS. I thought that Ubuntu, as a Debian based system, had no use for yum.

So I was surprised to find yum in the (universe section of) the official Ubuntu repositories.

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 09 '12 at 08:31

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Yum is for RPM packages. RPM is not the preferred installation method in Ubuntu. The equivalent to Yum would be APT and dpkg. Yum is not a preferred way to update an Ubuntu system.

To install it, you can do so from USC, or from terminal:

sudo apt-get install yum

I don't think you would have a use for it, since there are equivalent Commands in Ubuntu. See the Table of Equivalent Commands

I would think that it can be used as a backup, if for some reason normal command won't work.

answered Jul 09 '12 at 08:31

Mitch

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+1 The idea to use it as a backup is a good one--I have needed to get some software while my `dpkg` cache was amok. – nanofarad Jul 09 '12 at 11:22
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Does it actually work as a backup? – 8128 Jul 09 '12 at 13:18
@fluteflute It acts as another way to get software if apt is malfunctioning. – nanofarad Jul 23 '12 at 11:57

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 23 '12 at 00:05

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The primary use case for yum in Ubuntu is if a third-party application has its own yum repository, and no apt repository. Then it will sometimes work to install yum, enable the vendor/project repository for that software, and install the software.

answered Jul 23 '12 at 00:05

Eliah Kagan

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 03 '20 at 11:54

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It is needed to create come types of LXC Containers, for example, those based on CentOS.

answered Jul 03 '20 at 11:54

jicarretero

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When would yum be of use to an Ubuntu user?

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