Debian user here, I just use apt. Really easy to use. I don’t really think about being fond of a certain package manager, if it works, it works.

I’m using pacman with paru right now, but I have to say than installing flatpaks has been a really nice experience on my postmarket-os phone and on desktop as well. I am using Gnome Software to install and run with two clicks, feels very snappy.

Nix on NixOS - pin any version of a package you want, multiple versions of the same package, works on all Linux distros and MacOS, and with Home-Manager it can even manage your dotfiles.

I like apt for its syntax, I like yay for it’s speed and ease compared to pacman.

Pacman has absurd option syntax, I think to deliberately make it feel exclusive. If the first thing you need to do is create a bunch of aliases or a crib sheet for basic things then it’s a terrible user experience.

apk is scary fast. Makes spinning up a quick Alpine chroot with e.g. Go or Rust for building with Musl take like 10 seconds.

I use Linux since 2004 and have a lot of experience with all kinds of different package managers. I use all these actively on different systems right now and I like them best in this order:

flatpak > apk > paru / pacman > portage > apt

Used to prefer portage over everything, but as I got older, with 2 little children, etc. I just don’t want to use source-based stuff intensively any more. Nowadays, I prefer to just install my sheit and have it work.

pacman and that’s because the syntax is perfect. If a distro doesn’t use pacman I usually don’t even consider using it.

Portage, of course.

Can it be emerge? I love calling software forth from the depths.

xbps, it’s the fastest one I’ve seen but the syntax is kinda weird

xbps

My favourite is pacman. I actually like the syntax. It feels very UNIX-y.

I’m a fan of the refresh (-y) and upgrade (-u) options being separate flags that can be used separately or together. I also find pacman’s output to be very clean and readable.

Whenever I use apt, I find it slightly annoying that I need to invoke update and upgrade (and dist-upgrade) separately. I also find apt spits out a lot of unnecessary output, resulting in an unreadable wall of text.

I haven’t used yum/dnf much, but the few times I used it I was slightly annoyed that it seems to insist on refreshing the repositories every time it runs.

pacman and apt are king. I usually go between arch and demon when I’m using Linux. I prefer arch since it’s barbones

Pacman, indeed.

My favorite is pacman (BTW, I really like the syntax), but I’m on openSUSE now so I deal with zypper, which works really well but I’m not a fan of the syntax.