Managing packages can be a tricky undertaking, even with package tools like the RPM Package Manager (RPM), the package management tool used by Conectiva, Fedora, Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, Yellow Dog, and many other distributions. With RPM, you may try to install a package, only to find that it depends on others you don’t have. Or, you might discover that your packages are several versions out of date and then have to track down and install potentially dozens of updates to fix security and other problems with the old packages.
Managing packages can be a tricky undertaking, even with package tools like the RPM Package Manager (RPM), the package management tool used by Conectiva, Fedora, Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, Yellow Dog, and many other distributions. With RPM, you may try to install a package, only to find that it depends on others you don’t have. Or, you might discover that your packages are several versions out of date and then have to track down and install potentially dozens of updates to fix security and other problems with the old packages.
The Debian distribution has long had a solution to these problems: the Advanced Package Tools (APT), a set of programs that help manage packages. APT lies at a layer above Debian’s usual lower-level package management tools, such as dpkg (Debian’s equivalent to rpm). By linking to one or more package repositories, APT can streamline software installation, upgrades, and other management operations.
Although APT was developed for Debian, it’s been ported to work with RPM-based distributions. The result is that most RPM-based systems can take full advantage of APT’s features, which can be very useful on any Linux system.
Why Use APT on an RPM-Based Distribution?
Many RPM-based Linux distributions today ship with package management tools that provide features similar to APT. For instance, Fedora and Red Hat’s Package Management and Update Agent tools and SuSE’s YaST and YaST2 let you install sets of packages, with all dependencies met, and even provide the means to update…
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