* Stefan Nilsen (stefan.nilsen@wale.dyndns.dk) [020503 17:32]: :: ::In what way is APT *less* distro specific than RPM? APT only works well ::in 2 big distributions. RPM works in most distributions... RPM = package format There is an installer for this format called RPM which APT for RPM calls I'm sure. I doubt apt4rpm is calling the Debian .deb install program. :) APT = system manipulation tool that can download, install and maintain a db of installed pkgs. It's not a package format. If you were to use APT on a Debian system you would be installing .deb's which are a pkg format. ::It even does not require dependencies to be correct, because you can ::always --force --nodeps when installing a package. This cannot be done ::with apt4rpm. I agree APT is a very nice tool in a perfect world, but ::the world is not perfect... Exactly. You can still download things via ftp and do what you suggest above. If SuSE were to support the APT tool outright then you wouldn't have any of the issues such as you had with java2 because SuSE would most like make their directory structure on the ftp server match what APT needs and they would write the scripts for deps checking that you and others now have to configure manually. It's a chicken and the egg situation. ::> Both requests/wishes are already provided by APT. The UI to decide ::> which packages to install is there as well. Just use apt-get -S ::> upgrade, e.g.: ::> ::> dar:~ # apt-get -S upgrade ::> Processing File Dependencies... Done ::> Reading Package Lists... Done ::> Building Dependency Tree... Done ::> The following packages have been kept back ::> k_deflt ::> The following packages can be upgraded: ::> mozilla from 0.9.9-9 to 1.0rc1-0 ::> Importance: ? Date: ? ::> xf86tools from 0.1-146 to 0.1-233 ::> Importance: ? Date: ? ::> ::> Now use "apt-get install mozilla". :: ::I don't call that a good ui :-) It's a perfect UI for those of us who remotely administrate servers and do not have X installed since X is a security risk anyway. There are quite a few (G)UI frontends for APT and I am VERY sure that if SuSE decided to support apt which quite frankly I would LOVE for them to do. Then they would most likely configure the CLI to support it fully and make a YaST2 module for it for all those who can't type very well. ;) How's this. Chris asked us to send requests for things that we would all like to see in SuSE why don't we send the request for apt4rpm so that everything will work well..instead of saying "welp, it's not supported now so I'm not going to use it until SuSE gets the lightbulb above their heads and supports it." That's not very pro-active since they already do so much..2K+ pkgs and everything else is a lot to keep track of. -=Ben --=====-----=====-- mailto:ben@whack.org --=====-- If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little. -GC --=====-----=====--