Can I use other package managers to install software?

[a584-droid]

I'm a newbie and can't run startx. I'm first of all want to update my system and install other system components. I don't clearly see how gobo users should progress 017.1 version after installation since it's dated "out of the box". As I read in wiki binary packages isn't available to install. And maintaince mode and so on. But is there ways to get around?

[fyrak1s]

Hi thanks for checking us out. I would advice you not to get into GoboLinux until you have a very decent/proficient experience with linux distro's like archlinux or even gentoo.

GoboLinux is a distro for people who know what they are doing and are in for the tinkering and compiling programs. The way we update our programs on GoboLinux is by packaging them ourselves when we need a newer version, and then contribute that back to our recipe store.

[rubyFeedback]

To the initial question:

"Can I use other package managers to install software?"

Yes, you can. For instance, you can use GoboLinux pretty much like any classic Linux distribution, e. g. with the primary prefix to be used being /usr/. The symlinks are all there for compatibility, as Hisham once wrote in his famous "I am not clueless" article - see https://gobolinux.org/doc/articles/clueless.html. I also used GoboLinux like this in the past, although I used a hybrid approach - smaller programs I compiled into the versioned AppDir, e. g. /Programs/Htop/4.3.1/ (or perhaps it was HTop or HTOP, I can never remember this offhand; I think kdelibs used to have KDE-Libs as name). Larger programs, in particular those with .gir files, I tended to compile into /usr/ prefix, largely because I still don't fully understand how these are used.

GoboLinux is just like other Linux systems at the end of the day. So it is perfectly possible.

There are some different paths though, so you may have to make adjustments.

Using versioned AppDirs is creating more internal structure though, so the ideal situation should be that you simply compile programs into an appdir. You can have multiple versions in that directory and switch at your leisure. I do this on a non-gobo system a lot, for GCC for instance. I keep stable gcc versions and also git clone checkout of gcc. This approach works quite ok-ish even on a non gobo system. GoboLinux has the advantage that it is focused on creating versioned appdirs and maintaining these even as you compile new programs. So ultimately you should be able to have as many programs as you want to. The only tricky issue I found is with regards to glibc. I have not yet found an easy way to update glibc; recompiling everything is possible but tedious. But that's a side comment, so basically the answer should be yes.

I'd recommend you to become more familiar with what you use though, if you aren't yet very familiar, as it also depends on the package manager. For instance, setting up pacman was a LOT easier for me than dpkg/apt and I kind of gave up on dpkg/apt (and rpm). I think pacman should work fairly well, if anyone wants to give it a try.