Package managers make life on Linux a whole lot easier. Instead of managing bits of software by yourself and sorting out the inevitable dependency hell, where one package depends upon another and that depends upon yet another and so on, you can have a clever bit of software do all the work.

NixOS is designed as a test of Nix, a new package manager designed to overcome key problems with existing package managers. As a result, what you think of NixOS is likely to depend largely on your interest in package management.

All Linux distributions have things in common, but many differ in software installation and updating. Gentoo Linux is based on Portage, SUSE uses YaST, Red Hat and Fedora opt for yum, Linspire prefers CNR.... Oh, and don't forget the different package options: RPM, Debian, source, and more esoteric options.

Security vulnerabilities are often the result of software bugs. It is important to keep software up-to-date, as malicious parties often can exploit bugs in outdated software. Package managers were created to automate the process of package update and installation, however, if the package manager is not secure, it may represent another avenue of attack!

Sometimes, a utility or an application that you want to install is impossible to find in the format of your distribution. Alien is a utility that can convert one package type into another. It can get you out of a fix when you can't find a package for your distribution, and it is also useful for package maintainers who want to distribute packages for distributions that they don't run.

Muon Package Management Suite is the package management application that will replace Kubuntu’s package manager when Kubuntu 11.10 is released next month. It is designed for Debian-based systems, so it could be used on similar distributions, not just on Kubuntu. In fact, it is included in the default repository of Linux Mint 11.

A short introduction to package management. Provides an overview of YUM (RPM-based distributions) and Aptitude (Debian and its derivatives).

To me this is a very simple question to answer. Linux does not need a unified package manager when the source to the application you are using is available for you to compile on your own. Make your own package.

In the "if it ain't broke, then why the hell are you fixing it?" department, maybe I should refocus my energies on Debian and not worry so much about Fedora/Red Hat. But there's something about Fedora/RHEL that is calling to me.