apt vs yum — Package Managers Compared

apt and yum (and its successor dnf) are package managers used to install and update software, but on different Linux distribution families.

Key points

• apt is used on Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu; yum/dnf is used on Red Hat-based distributions like CentOS and Fedora
• apt update refreshes the package index; apt upgrade installs available updates — yum/dnf combines both into a single "update" command
• Package names and available versions can differ between the two ecosystems even for the same underlying software

Example

sudo apt update && sudo apt install nginx