Linux

Oh I totally agree with that. But I don't think the regular a new user should be using CLI tools to install packages. There are plenty of GUI tools that should be doing that for you instead.

And if they did, it should be very simplified with a wrapper script like in the example above, iirc the common command update-grub is a wrapper script that simplifies it, it is a shame this isn't more common with other tasks.

This could be even standardized, like regardless of the distro if you type installpkg vim, the installpkg script would do something like this that will run it thru the most popular packages managers to do the simple operation:

# Install with 'pacman' (if available)
if command -v pacman >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    sudo pacman -S $@ || exit 1
fi

# Install with 'apt' (if available)
if command -v apt >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    sudo apt install $@ || exit 1
fi

# Install with 'dnf' (if available)
if command -v dnf >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    sudo dnf install $@ || exit 1
fi

echo "No package manager found"

alias totally works, but if you want to simplify it for multiple package managers then it is better to use a script.

Like this example that when the user types pkginstall vim, pkginstall would be a script in path that would do the operation regarless of the package manager:

# Install with 'pacman' (if available)
if command -v pacman >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    sudo pacman -S $@ || exit 1
fi

# Install with 'apt' (if available)
if command -v apt >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    sudo apt install $@ || exit 1
fi

# Install with 'dnf' (if available)
if command -v dnf >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    sudo dnf install $@ || exit 1
fi

They could even install it in their ~/.local/bin, and as long as their distro makes that part of PATH (which arch does not kek) by just using that same home with another distro they already could install/remove packages and update using those wrapper scripts regardless of the distro.

If you are wondering why the script needs to check if the package manager exists, it is because when testing it I discovered that if the first one is not installed it will cancel the operation and not continue, and if I remove the exit 1 it will attempt to use the next package manager when canceling the operation with ctrl+c.