[TriLUG] Apt-get for Red Hat and Mandrake problems with it?? from Lockergnome's PenguinShell

[al johnson]

We were talking about Apt on Red Hat today at the Crazy Fire restaurant, when 
I came home and opened my mail from Lockergnome's Penguin Shell Newsletter. 
Thought everyone would be interested in what they said about it. --Al Johnson
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Apt for Red Hat

 I've written several times about the great apt tool for Debian. As our 
current review distro, Libranet is a Debian-based distro, I provided a 
summary of apt-get in the GnomeTWEAK section of Friday's Penguin Shell issue. 
During the day on Friday, I received an email from Penguin Shell reader Romel 
that really made my day:


 Regarding 'Apt-getting' that you mentioned in the 1[7] Jan 2003 edition of 
the Penguin Shell:

 I recently discovered that apt has been ported over to Red Hat (versions 
6.2, 7.2, 7.3, and 8.0. I've only tried it out on 7.3 and 8.0 though, both 
successfully). There's also a GUI front end called 'synAPTic' to make things 
even easier.

 I got so sick of hunting down rpm dependencies that I looked for apt for Red 
Hat on a lark, and was pleasantly (ok, ecstatically) surprised to find it. 
Yippee, no more hunting through rpmfind mirrors to find missing dependencies!

 Apt and apt repositories can be found at the fine folks over at 
freshrpms.net. 

 Apt-get for Red Hat? I couldn't believe I'd missed it. Sure enough, the apt 
rpm was sitting comfortably on the freshrpms site. Here's the process I went 
through to make this great system functional in my Red Hat 8.0 system at home.

 Start at this link to get the Red Hat apt package. The download link is in 
the top part of the page, noted with a floppy disk icon.

 Install the apt rpm as root using the normal rpm installation convention:

 rpm -ivh /path/to/file/apt-0.5.4cnc9-fr1.i386.rpm

 You'll also need the genaptrep.sh script from this page. This script sets up 
your local apt repository. Change the permissions on this file to make it 
executable:

 chmod u+x path/to/file/genaptrep.sh

 then run the script as root. At the completion of these two steps, you'll 
have a working apt system and a local repository for apt/rpm files.

 With the install working, two actions are in order. As root, enter the 
following commands from a console window:

 apt-get update
 apt-get upgrade

 These commands bring your local repository up to date and upgrade to the 
newest version any packages installed on your system.

 If you'd prefer to work with apt-get via a GUI tool, the next step is to 
download and install the great synaptic package:

 apt-get install synaptic

 The above-noted Penguin Shell issue can serve as a guide for the basic usage 
of apt-get in Red Hat.

 I spent part of the weekend playing with apt-get in my Red Hat system and 
found, to my pleasant surprise, that it works as well as in a Debian system. 
It does seem a bit slower, but the functionality and ease is equal to that of 
any Debian or Debian-based system.

 In theory, this should work with any Red Hat-based system - that is, one 
that uses RPM. I have, however, already heard of some difficulties with 
Mandrake systems.

 I have to admit that one of the greatest personal attractions to Debian and 
Debian-like systems has been apt-get. With this capability available for Red 
Hat, I've got one less reason to consider a change in distro on my primary 
systems.