No, this is directly relevant to the comparison, especially since the original context of this discussion is about how Windows portable apps are no bigger than their locally installed counterparts.
A typical Linux package manager provides applications and libraries. It is very common for a single package install with yum/dnf, apt, pacman, etc. to pull in dozens of dependencies, many of which are shared with other applications. Whereas, a single package install on Windows through winget almost never pulls in any other packages. This is because Windows applications are almost always distributed in self-contained format; the aforementioned MSVCRT is a notable exception, though it's typically bundled as part of the installer.
So yes, Windows has a package manager, and it's great for what it does, but it's very different from a Linux package manager in practice. The distinction doesn't really matter to end users, but it does to developers, and it has a direct effect on package sizes. I don't think this situation is going to change much even as winget matures. Linux distributions carefully manage their packages, while Microsoft doesn't (and probably shouldn't).
I never said that WinGet was a drop in replacement for yum - but the parents claim that windows doesn’t have a package manager isn’t true.
There are plenty of padkages that require you to add extra sources to your package manager, that are not maintained by the distro. Docker [0] has official instructions to install via their package source. WinGet allows third party sources, so there’s no reason you can’t use it. It natively supports dependencies too. The fact that applications are packaged in a way that doesn’t utilise this for WinGet is true - but again, I was responding to the claim that windows doesn’t have a package manager.
> I never said that WinGet was a drop in replacement for yum - but the parents claim that windows doesn’t have a package manager isn’t true.
Context matters. They were talking about a type of package manager.
But even without caring about context, the sentence was not "Windows does not have a package manager". The sentence ended with "Windows does not have a package manager to install them" and "them" refers to things that winget generally does not have.
Not as understood by users of every other operating system, even macOS. It's more of an "application manager". Microsoft has a history of developing something and reusing the well-understood term to mean something completely different.
