apt for RPM - Calum, you want this!

[voidmain]

You RPM dependency haters need to install apt for your RPM based system, along with a graphical utility called "synaptic". Installing RPM based apps and system updates has never been so easy!

Download and install these two RPMs:
http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/psyche/apt/apt-0.5.4cnc9-fr1.i386.rpm
http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/psyche/synaptic/synaptic-0.24.1-fr1.i386.rpm

Then run "synaptic" and first click "update". Then just have fun. You can install apps or upgrade your system via this graphical tool or from the command line much the same as it's done in Debian:

# apt-get install appname

which will install the specified app, plus any required dependencies. Pretty slick stuff.

[edit]Actually I don't know if this will work with Mandrake or SuSe. It appears to possibly be targeted only for Connectiva and RedHat distributions but it wouldn't hurt to try.[/edit]

[ October 30, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[creedon]

The obvious (and best) solution is to simply INSTALL DEBIAN!!!  Why would ANYONE want to use the apt/dpkg management system with Redhat when DEBIAN is the most powerful, stable, sexiest, beautiful operating system tha ever has, or ever will, exist.  When you install DEBIAN, you automatically grow four inches (vertically AND horizontallly),; women FLOCK to you instictivley, your bank account DOUBLES, your dog no longer has fleas, and your electric company sends YOU checks!

REAL men use DEBIAN!!

[Master of Reality]

i did something...bad... when i tried to install it, now i dont have any rpm.

One of apt-rpms dependencies is RPM 4.0.4, i have 4.0.3, i found out you cant install rpm with rpm, because it doesnt work.
I am gonna isntall rpm 4.0.3 from RH7.2 CD soon

[ October 30, 2002: Message edited by: The Master of Reality / B0B ]

[Calum]

looks good, i have not done it yet as i am in a hurry, creedon, is it worth my while switching from mandrake to debian, all in? at the moment i don't have time to relearn anything, but i can use mandrake alright, so what do you think? what i'm really worried about is bugs. i can't stand the oqnes that seem to ocassionally sneak into mandrake, and also hardware support, i have a buggyq laptop full of SiS stuff,
so is it worth trying DebIan?

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by The Master of Reality / B0B:
i did something...bad... when i tried to install it, now i dont have any rpm.

One of apt-rpms dependencies is RPM 4.0.4, i have 4.0.3, i found out you cant install rpm with rpm, because it doesnt work.
I am gonna isntall rpm 4.0.3 from RH7.2 CD soon

You most certainly *can* upgrade RPM with RPM. I've done it countless times. What steps did you take to upgrade it? Have you tried an "rpm --rebuilddb"?

[Master of Reality]

i did
rpm -Uvh rpm-4.2.rpm --nodeps
rpm --rebuilddb
then it gave me a whole bunch of errors and then rpm wouldnt work afterwards.

I dont know if it works now.

....
EDIT... Me fixed it... i had to do rpm -Uvh 4.2.rpm --nodeps --force

[ October 30, 2002: Message edited by: The Master of Reality / B0B ]

[voidmain]

Usually you get all of the RPM system packages listed on RedHat's web site and upgrade them all at once. Here are the updated packages. You would *at minimum* want to upgrade any in the errata list that you currently have installed:

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHEA-2002-024.html

This upgrade isn't as critical as previous upgrades. For instance, there doesn't appear to be a database upgrade involved. If there were you surely need to upgrade the database and the RPM packages together or you will run into trouble.

[Master of Reality]

i really should upgrade to redhat 8.0.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by creedon:
The obvious (and best) solution is to simply INSTALL DEBIAN!!!  Why would ANYONE want to use the apt/dpkg management system with Redhat when DEBIAN is the most powerful, stable, sexiest, beautiful operating system tha ever has, or ever will, exist.  When you install DEBIAN, you automatically grow four inches (vertically AND horizontallly),; women FLOCK to you instictivley, your bank account DOUBLES, your dog no longer has fleas, and your electric company sends YOU checks!

REAL men use DEBIAN!!

Hey, I like Debian too, espeically the package management. However, I believe RedHat is far superior to Debian for a n00b because there are a lot things that are cleaned up and polished including many nice graphical administration utilities. It's clean and everything fits together well the way they have it set up. I personally don't mind RPM but it is more difficult if you don't know how to use it. RedHat 8 does solve some of this with their new graphical package management utility but it's really only good for what comes on their CDs. And as much as I hate to use popularity as an excuse RedHat does have more 3rd party support than any other distro.

Having said that, I like Debian as much as I like RedHat for servers, both of them being far out in front of any other distro in my views. But for Desktop use I think RedHat is hard to beat. apt is superior to RPM in a lot of ways and I hope RedHat adopts this (or at least an apt like front-end) in future releases. I doubt they will do this but one can hope.

[creedon]

quote:Originally posted by void main:


Hey, I like Debian too, espeically the package management. However, I believe RedHat is far superior to Debian for a n00b because there are a lot things that are cleaned up and polished including many nice graphical administration utilities. It's clean and everything fits together well the way they have it set up. I personally don't mind RPM but it is more difficult if you don't know how to use it. RedHat 8 does solve some of this with their new graphical package management utility but it's really only good for what comes on their CDs. And as much as I hate to use popularity as an excuse RedHat does have more 3rd party support than any other distro.

Having said that, I like Debian as much as I like RedHat for servers, both of them being far out in front of any other distro in my views. But for Desktop use I think RedHat is hard to beat. apt is superior to RPM in a lot of ways and I hope RedHat adopts this (or at least an apt like front-end) in future releases. I doubt they will do this but one can hope.

Agreed, with reservations; Woody's installer, like all the previous versions installer, is a throwback to the early '90's when installing Linux was a severe pain in the ass.  It's gotten so bad that Debian is getting flak from long time users (I don't really understand that, after one install, apt-get dist-upgrade on a new release should eliminate a fresh install, but, hey it's all theory, right?)  
The weeping and moaning HAS had a positive effect; one of the main goals for "Sarge" is a GRaphical installer- right now, an installer that ProgenyLinux developed is in the lead.  It's called PGI (piggy) and the sreenshots are very interesting; the Debian maintainers say they won't release "Sarge" as stable until PGI is available for all architctures, so maybe the creamy goodness of Debian will become easier for noobs to get to.
There's also a project called "Debian Desktop" that just started with a goal of competing toe-to-toe with Redhat in the Linux desktop arena; should be interesting.

[voidmain]

That's great. I think it is good that there are several distributions of Linux to compete with each other. It's added incentive to progress. Debian is the only contender that we know will always be here. It will never go out of business no matter how big/popular RedHat or SuSe or some other distro becomes. And even if all commercial distros disappear we'll always have Debian.

A side benefit of Debian is it keeps the Commercial distros in check. The commercial distros know they can't rape their users or their users will drop them like a hot potato for Debian or another distro. I am not like many who would like to see one Linux. I think the competition is what will eventually make Linux king (it already is in my book but it will only keep getting better).

But Debian *is* as good (and better in many ways) as any commercial distro for hard core types like us. I happen to push RedHat because I think it has the eye candy that n00bs and Windows converts want to see (initially). It has the commercial support that businesses want to see. And it has put a lot of work into standardizing the desktop which initially I didn't like but now see as a win for the new user.

[creedon]

quote:Originally posted by void main:
That's great. I think it is good that there are several distributions of Linux to compete with each other. It's added incentive to progress. Debian is the only contender that we know will always be here. It will never go out of business no matter how big/popular RedHat or SuSe or some other distro becomes. And even if all commercial distros disappear we'll always have Debian.

A side benefit of Debian is it keeps the Commercial distros in check. The commercial distros know they can't rape their users or their users will drop them like a hot potato for Debian or another distro. I am not like many who would like to see one Linux. I think the competition is what will eventually make Linux king (it already is in my book but it will only keep getting better).

But Debian *is* as good (and better in many ways) as any commercial distro for hard core types like us. I happen to push RedHat because I think it has the eye candy that n00bs and Windows converts want to see (initially). It has the commercial support that businesses want to see. And it has put a lot of work into standardizing the desktop which initially I didn't like but now see as a win for the new user.

For as much as I tout apt/dpkg, and as good as it is, the single biggest advantage Debian has is the core of maintainers that keep it so damned stable; it's a ROCK, reliable as the sunrise, and it's all due to a bunch of volunteers who do the work for nothing but the sake of producing a superior operating system.  I am just amazed at the dedication of these people, and I'm really greatful that they're willing to do what they do.  A lot of Linux users have said that Debian is a "Communist" distro; personally, I think that Debian just shows what a world-wide group of dedicated individuals can accomplish when they're willing to work together.
Calum; Give Libranet a try; it's Debian without the pain!

[Calum]

seems like some kind of fucking joke...

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well, i'll try and resolve all these dependencies but it better fucking work after all this crap.

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oh good, well i'm really happy about that. this leaves me dead in the water, what do i do now?

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this sucks so much, i really have to fucking hold a program's hand to get it installed. how ironic.

four edits later, and i am still on the dependency-go-round with no hope of ever getting off. i still don't know what to do about the bzip libraries, and now, what a surprise:

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[edit the fifth]well, tcl is now up to 35% downloaded, and i have to go out, so this attempt to install this program that allegedly gets rid of dependencies is now taking more than one day to install, and i still don't know what to do about the bzip conflict thing. any ideas? i think linux needs to consider people who don't have a personal connection to an internet backbone in their living rooms.

[ November 02, 2002: Message edited by: Calum-21.2 ]

[voidmain]

Calum, I am really sorry about your trouble and there are two things that I forgot when I started this thread.

First I forgot that you are on Mandrake. I am fairly sure this will not be the good experience it is on RedHat on Mandrake if it even works at all on Mandrake.

Second thing I forgot is that you are on dialup and it's a pain for you to download crap. Things that take me seconds could take you an hour over dialup. After researching this a little more I don't think it's going to work on Mandrake. Why do I think that? There are no Mandrake apt repositories that I can find.

Again, I am sorry you wasted a whole day on this. But for those who are using RedHat, this is a *must have*. After installing you would never again have the type of problem you are having just getting apt installed unless the package you are trying to install is not in the repository (all the good stuff is in there).

[Calum]

hmm, well i will continue to strive for this thing, as it really makes me more determined as i put more effort into something! i spent weeks getting all the dependencies for wine, although i never got it to actually run anything... so i will keep trying, and void main, it certainly isn't your fault i can't get it to work, thanks for telling me about it anyway! but do you have any idea how i can resolve this bzip thing? usually i just come up against dependencies, not conflicts, so what comes next in that case?

and lastly, here's an update:

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I'll keep you all posted!    

edit again -

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This annoys me because lsbdev is supposed to contain libc.so.6 according to rpmfind, and anyway i am sure i had C libraries installed anyway...
right, time to download some red hat package with libc.so.6 in i suppose...

[ November 02, 2002: Message edited by: Calum-21.2 ]