Well, Apt is, as you say, one of the better tools around. What really bothers me is the fact that it isn’t included with the base install. Yes, I know, YaST2 and Zypper is Suse’s love children, but still, one should strive for the best …

Apt is at least included in the default oss repository now, which is a step forward. It’s also easier to get up and running than it was earlier.

Yast2 also made huge leaps since 10.1/10.2. It’s quicker, much due to improved caching, it got a graphical tool for one-click addition of repositories, and the world got Yast Meta Package files, which is essentially a XML file providing references to a repository, and a package to install. Yast loads the ymp and repository, installs the package and it’s depencies, and removes repository. One click install with depencies.

I don’t really install software that often, maybe twice or thrice a month, so I can’t say that it bothers me if the tool uses 20 seconds more for starting than another tool.

Though, the upcoming star of package management seems to be smart, which is a cross-platform software management tool. It starts in less than one second here, and is on par with synaptics with it’s GUI, and searching for a package is 7 times quicker than with apt. And the syntax is more or less the same. smart install, smart search, smart remove etc. So I guess smart will rock apt, since it’s better on handling depencies and quicker!