I think the package manager delivered with a distro is a pretty important aspect of it, since it basically is a main way for installing and removing software from the system. I've got only experience with one distro, and that is Archlinux, which has a package manager called "pacman". When I'm on the ##linux channel on freenode and mention I use Archlinux, they often say that my distro sucks. However it works perfectly for me, and I don't really feel like replacing something that works and allows me to always have to most recent versions of all software and desktop managers. I've never worked a lot with any other distro, and I don't know a lot about their package managers, if they have any. So my question is: What sort of system or package manager to the major distros use for getting & uninstalling software? How do the different distros compare to each other in this aspect? If you know pacman of Archlinux: how does it compare to those of other distros?

I don't know much about ArchLinux, so I can't comment.

As for the comments you found in IRC, all I can say is, don't put faith in IRC fanboys' comments.

I have used two of the major distributions' package management systems: Redhat-based RPM (and yum for management) and Debian-based DEB (and apt for management).

In Redhat (and Fedora, from what I understand, though I haven't used RH since v9), you were responsible for managing versions and resolving conflicts between packages. Tools like yum made this easier, by managing the package dependency for you.

In Debian (and specifically in Ubuntu, of which I have experience), the same sort of system is set up. The apt suite of utilities manages downloading, updating from repositories, and performing system-wide updates.

I haven't compared the two personally, but I prefer Ubuntu's package management system, as it makes updates and new installations very simple. I highly recommend it, if you're thinking of getting into a new distribution and want to excel at productivity.

Cheers,
- m³

More about Debian/Ubuntu: They both use apt, which is a really nice command-line utility built around dpkg. There are also a few very good GUI front-ends. I mainly use Synaptic which is quite powerfull and exposes a lot to the user. Ubuntu also has a second, newbie friendly package manager. It's simply called "Install and remove applications" (according to the docs). There's also Aptitude which has the nice feature that it will also remove obsolete dependencies. Very usefull if you (un)install a lot of applications. The downside of Aptitude is that you have to use it from the start, or it can't track obsolete dependencies anymore.

Aside from that I only used Yast2 on a Suse 9.3 box. It's a pretty nice curses-based installer. It does much more than manage packages though. It takes care of your entire use system.