APT or RPM Re: Linux on a laptop ... step 2?

[Ed Hill]

On Wed, 2005-05-18 at 06:17 -0400, dsr at tao.merseine.nu wrote:
> On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 10:38:48PM -0400, William Ricker wrote:
> > > > I suppose I'm not too invested in APT to switch to RPMs,
> > 
> > > Apt or dpkg?  Apt is just a front-end for the packaging system, and 
> > > there's a version of apt for RPM based systems.
> > 
> > Well that's true -- I have very little invested in 'dpkg' per se.
> > I've learned the 'apt-*' commands I need, but I've also bought into some
> > of the Debian philosophy.  Does APT for RPMs do as good a job with
> > dependencies?
> 
> Yes, but only with the proviso that the repository you are using
> has to supply the dependency information. This is possible if
> you have put together the repository yourself; otherwise, you
> are probably out of luck.

Hi Bill,

Recent versions of yum (as shipped with FC2, FC3, and the upcoming FC4)
are more-or-less drop-in replacements for apt.  And there are a number
of both "Fedora official" and 3rd-part yum repositories with thousands
of packages.  Here are a few if you'd like to give them a try:

  http://www.fedorafaq.org/
  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras
  http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/FAQ.php

Ed

ps - I don't in any way mean to insult apt, dpkg, or any Debian-based
  distros.  They were, originally, way ahead of any RPM-based package 
  management systems.  However, yum has grown up and is now very close 
  to feature-parity.

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
office:  MIT Dept. of EAPS;  Rm 54-1424;  77 Massachusetts Ave.
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