Older versions of this course used the "provider" package instead of "riverpod" for app-wide state management.

riverpod is a library created by the same developer as the provider library - it's essentially a re-write of the provider package, fixing many of the flaws of that library (also see: https://github.com/rrousselGit/riverpod).

That's why this course uses riverpod.

As mentioned in the section, there generally are many other alternative packages you could use instead - for example Redux or Bloc. This page from the official documentation gives you a good overview of available packages - definitely feel free to play around with them and find the package your personally like most.