"apt" to eventaully replace "rpm"?

[Nigel Henry]

On Sunday 25 November 2007 23:02, Aaron Konstam wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-11-25 at 15:53 +0000, Chris Jones wrote:
> > > I've used both.  I LOVED apt.  It was FAST.  I mean real fast.  I
> > > actually preferred it to yum.  It had a sweet GUI interface, and
> > > searches were quick.  I could use it for for bringing-in packages as
> > > stated, but it worked well as a local package manager too.  It was an
> > > all-in-one solution.
> >
> > I'm with you there. APT is much faster than yum. The gui you are
> > thinking of is probably synaptic, and I agree its probably the best
> > package manager GUI I've used.
>
> Now I think we are confusing apt with apt-get. Synaptic is the apt-get
> gui in Ubuntu, It is all confusing, to me at least.

I use apt on Debian, and Kubuntu, and have used apt on Fedora since FC1. Going 
back into the mists of time, and FC1, which incidentally I still have 
installed on both of my machines, and still works well, though no longer 
supported. That aside, I was stuck with Redhats up2date on FC1. Being on 
dialup, and up2date not having any resume support, you can imagine what it 
was like trying to get updates. I found apt when looking for music apps, and 
found planetccrma. Apt was presented as a package manager, and I havn't 
looked back. Saying that though, the earlier versions of apt ran a lot faster 
than those that are using repometadata now. I'm comparing .
apt-0.5.15cnc6-1.1.fc2.fr
with
apt-0.5.15lorg3.2.12.fc7

Anyway, back to apt, and apt-get. Apt is the package you install to use the 
Apt package manager. Apt-get is how you use it on the CLI.

apt-get update will update the package lists to the latest available.
apt-get upgrade, or apt-get dist-upgrade will download and install the latest 
packages.

See man:apt-get in your browser for the differences between apt-get upgrade, 
and apt-get dist-upgrade.

Synaptic is a GUI for apt-get, much as Yumex is a GUI for Yum. personally I 
prefer Synaptic as it lists all the installed packages, along with the 
available ones, whereas Yumex has them on 2 separate lists. Everyone to there 
own I suppose, but I just prefer Apt, and Synaptic.

2¢ worth of weekend ramblings.

Nigel.
>
> > > Yum became the Fedora/RedHat standard, as I recall, due to apt not
> > > being able to differenciate between architectures; i.e., if I wanted to
> > > install the current *.i686.rpm kernel, apt couldn't distinguish between
> > > that and a *.i386.rpm kernel.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but it was a major
> > > issue that prevented apt from working under Fedora correctly.
> >
> > I think this correct - Not only i386/i686 but more importantly multilib
> > - i.e. having both the 32bit and 64 bit versions of some packages at the
> > same time. That was some time ago and I do wonder if ubuntu/debian have
> > not solved this by now - Surely they have a need to do the same thing
> > over there ?
> >
> > Also, I think APT doesn't handle multiple mirrors for a single repo as
> > well as yum, but I might be wrong here.
> >
> > cheers Chris
>
> --
> =======================================================================
> It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted. --
> Aeschylus
> =======================================================================
> Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: akonstam at sbcglobal.net