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For a Windows install my choices are :

1. ZoneAlarm Basic - Mandatory firewall
2. Windows Update - Mandatory updates
3. Mozilla - Why would you use Internet Explorer any longer?
4. Winrar - This little program is doing its job
5. Winamp
6. Acrobat reader
7. Putty - An efficient ssh client to communicate with your Linux boxes
8. OpenOffice.org - Word processing
9. Microsoft Office - Sometimes OpenOffice.org can't do the job...
10. Adobe PhotoShop

For Linux my choices are :

1. Update your installation - yum, apt or up2date
2. xmms-mp3 - Enable mp3 playback (freshrpms.net)
3. mplayer - The best video player (mpg, avi, dvd) (freshrpms.net)
4. perl-Video-DVDRip - Add a movie collection beside your music collection (freshrpms.net)
5. CodeWeavers CrossOver Plugin - Enable Microsoft plugins in Mozilla
6. Quicktime (via CrossOver Plugin)
7. Windows media player (via CrossOver Plugin)
8. Shockwave player (via CrossOver Plugin)
9. CodeWeavers CrossOver Office - Run Windows application in Linux
10. Microsoft Office (via CrossOver Office)

For a Windows install my choices are :

1. ZoneAlarm Basic - Mandatory firewall
2. Windows Update - Mandatory updates
3. Mozilla - Why would you use Internet Explorer any longer?
4. Winrar - This little program is doing its job
5. Winamp
6. Acrobat reader
7. Putty - An efficient ssh client to communicate with your Linux boxes
8. OpenOffice.org - Word processing
9. Microsoft Office - Sometimes OpenOffice.org can't do the job...
10. Adobe PhotoShop

For Linux my choices are :

1. Update your installation - yum, apt or up2date
2. xmms-mp3 - Enable mp3 playback (freshrpms.net)
3. mplayer - The best video player (mpg, avi, dvd) (freshrpms.net)
4. perl-Video-DVDRip - Add a movie collection beside your music collection (freshrpms.net)
5. CodeWeavers CrossOver Plugin - Enable Microsoft plugins in Mozilla
6. Quicktime (via CrossOver Plugin)
7. Windows media player (via CrossOver Plugin)
8. Shockwave player (via CrossOver Plugin)
9. CodeWeavers CrossOver Office - Run Windows application in Linux
10. Microsoft Office (via CrossOver Office)

1. netscape-communicator
2. mplayer
3. ogle
4. xine
5. xmms-mp3

Next time, do a quick search on google, and you should find just about anything you need for Linux. You should also join the Redhat Yahoo group which I am a moderator on. We answer every question with no nasty attitude toward new Linux users. You can also check out the Linux Yahoo group for all things Linux. We have the same attitude as the Redhat Yahoo group and have a few 1,000 members.

I don't have any problem using yum (or see this for some helpful info) these days. It uses apt-get to resolve rpm dependencies fine on both my YellowDogLinux machine as well as my Redhat9 machine. The trick is having the right repository (freshrpms works great for me).

I use Apt for RPM to keep my RedHat boxes up to date. As a busy Sysadmin/Programmer, its easier to just get the stuff updated or a new machine up than it is to compile everything.

I know how to compile everything but when the PHB is screaming at you to get stuff done it becomes impractical.

Oh apt for RPM can be found at Freshrpms

(I don't know if someone else posted this. I haven't seen it yet. Forgive me if this is a dupe.)

For anyone who has gone through the headache of dependency hell using RPMs, I would like to point you to apt for rpm. It's the same type of package management system that Debian uses, except that it uses the rpm system for the backend.

This means that, when you want to install a package, apt figures out all the dependencies for you, downloads, and installs them. It will upgrade things for you on a regular basis if new ones are released. It knows how to do the dependency traversal to upgrade (or remove) packages if they become out of date. I have found it to be the best way of keeping my system happy. And I'm not chasing down dependencies manually any more. Bleah.

For those who also install things from source, there is an ability to ignore package dependencies and just install. Plus, you always have access to the rpm system itself, so you can do things manually if you desire. You can then use apt-get's --fix-broken and --fix-missing options to "clean" things up if need be.

Check it out!

(I don't know if someone else posted this. I haven't seen it yet. Forgive me if this is a dupe.)

For anyone who has gone through the headache of dependency hell using RPMs, I would like to point you to apt for rpm. It's the same type of package management system that Debian uses, except that it uses the rpm system for the backend.

This means that, when you want to install a package, apt figures out all the dependencies for you, downloads, and installs them. It will upgrade things for you on a regular basis if new ones are released. It knows how to do the dependency traversal to upgrade (or remove) packages if they become out of date. I have found it to be the best way of keeping my system happy. And I'm not chasing down dependencies manually any more. Bleah.

For those who also install things from source, there is an ability to ignore package dependencies and just install. Plus, you always have access to the rpm system itself, so you can do things manually if you desire. You can then use apt-get's --fix-broken and --fix-missing options to "clean" things up if need be.

Check it out!

No. Fedora is trying very hard to avoid IP issues, so they've deliberately refrained from including things like mp3 decoders and DVD decoders that might get them into legal trouble. Fortunately, Fedora does have apt and yum available, so it's easy to add external repositories, like FreshRPMS or Livna, both of which do include mp3 players and DVD decoders. It's very convenient, and avoids a lot of legal headaches for RedHat.

FreshRPMS/a. is your BEST friend.

I'm 100% serious. And if you're lazy, install yum, point it at FreshRPMs, and "yum mplayer", "yum xine", "yum ogle" away.

That looks vaguely sexual. Sigh.

for redhat users, apt-for-rpm port is available at freshRPMS

Well, if it's just for the sake of the argument :-)

http://freshrpms.net/
http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/
http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/
http://atrpms.physik.fu-berlin.de/
http://www.aucs.org/rpmcenter/rpms.html
http://www.niemueller.de/projects/extrpms/

Those were just the ones I have bookmarked. You could find more with a web search.

Try using: ATrpms or NewRPMs or FreshRPMs or Dag's

All friendly with apt and yum. It's rare that I don't find a package in one of these repositories..

Yum (included in Fedora) and apt with RPMs make an excellent combination. I find apt to be about the same as this combination, but less intuitive for me.

From the Yum page: Yum is an automatic updater and package installer/remover for rpm systems. It automatically computes dependencies and figures out what things should occur to install packages. It makes it easier to maintain groups of machines without having to manually update each one using rpm.

Try it in ferdora - it's delicious

Combined with such repositories as ATrpms and FreshRPMS and I can find and install about any software title I'm looking for and have the dependencies installed easily.

Ark is not debian based, as you state, but apt is avaliable for RPM based distributions:

http://ayo.freshrpms.net

APT is now avaliable for RedHat distros.. check out this page

After struggling for a while with the Kernel Versioning Hell (A few major releases ago, compiling a kernel was as simple as make dep; make zImage; make modules, but nowadays that doesn't seem to work without endless tweaking), I found Up-to-date Alsa RPMs for all major Linux distributions.

After struggling for a while with the Kernel Versioning Hell (A few major releases ago, compiling a kernel was as simple as make dep; make zImage; make modules, but nowadays that doesn't seem to work without endless tweaking), I found Up-to-date Alsa RPMs for all major Linux distributions.

There is sort of a benefit to having output plugins...

It works just as well.

In some ways I agree that this tool isn't all that useful. People are going to use whatever distro they want and if they are savy enough to try new distros then like you said they'll install from scratch. However the good news is we aren't being forced to use it. I'm definitely not changing over what works.

Show me a tool that converts portage or rpm data and creates a working Debian equivalent and I'll be impressed.

I use Apt for RPM on my RedHat machines.

Use APT and use Arjan's RPM repository. Cheers.

I am using Fedora Core 1 now and find it very stable, fast and well put together. The only problem is that it is a little "bleeding" edge for 3rd party apps. My Netlock VPN client doesn't work with the stock FC1 kernel so I had to install a Red Hat 9 kernel. I cannot get the Corda graphing server to run, and various issues with the newer NPTL and glibc stuff that requires patches to get Oracle to run. Though with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 with similar packages, the 3rd party support should pick up soon. Overall it is a good desktop, especially with freshrpms.net to get tons of extra packages.

You can get apt for RPMs from freshrpms.net. Works very well as far as I can tell.

I found the following intresting

"I think 2004 is going to be a big year for Fedora and Suse, and a challenge for Debian (because Fedora now offers apt for RPM)."

Well apart from the fact that apt for rpm has been around for a while and also debian packages usually come configured a lot better than fedora are aren't as buggy.

Of course with the recent Debian security breach things might not be that easy

Rus

I agree with you that user-downloaded software installs are a nightmare, but have you tried Synaptic (a GUI for apt on Debian as well as Red Hat)?

1. Click on your favorite desktop or menu icon for synaptic and enter the root password.
2. Just hit the "Update List" button and listings of all (several thousand) pieces of software are updated.
3. Click some combination of "Update All" and/or double click on a package name to select the software that you want to install.
4. Click "Proceed".

All of your old and new software is now downloaded and installed with no dependency problems or any other modification.

I absolutely love this sort of system as it makes it so trivial to install AND update just about everything. At the same time however, it would be nice to have some sort of a standard GUI installer that simplified the "./configure make make install" options. I might be a bit slow at these things ;-), but since nobody EVER mentions it, it took me about 8 months of frustration before I learned that "./configure --help" would give me a list of the options I could pass to the script. Everyone always just said "just do ./configure; make; make install;", so that's what I did. To the letter...

Idea for a helpful GUI source installer:
- give it a tarball of the source, the installer will unpack it and give you a list of dependencies and options.
- The installer will search for allready installed apps to fullfill dependencies and let you choose if there are multiple results (or "Advanced" ;-) users can specify manually)
- For each of the options have some decent defaults and put descriptions next to them for easy understanding.
- when done with options, hit "go" and the thing will be installed.

The above system should be pretty compatible with current cli installation methods and might only need a standard format for listing dependencies and default options to pass to the installer. If you don't have X (or Y!) or some other GUI, don't use it. Simple.

3rd party apt repositories, like Fresh RPMs, have been around for a while, are used by thousands, can be trusted, and make available apt for rpm packages that will do everything I said, even for old distros like Redhat 7.3. The process you need to get "Synaptic" installed on your system is something that can be done once (I do it right after the distro is installed). From there on after, software installation, updating, and uninstalling, is far easier than would be on Windows.

Here are the steps you could take:
1. Go to the link I gave in this post, and read the page.
2. Install the version of apt available from that page, for your distro version.
3. Install it as you would any other RPM
4. open a su terminal and type "apt-get update"
5. (you might have to do part 4 twice depending on the version of apt-rpm that is available for RH7.3)
6. type "apt-get dist-upgrade"
7. type "apt-get install synaptic"

I am not sure where the Synaptic icon will be placed on RH7.3, but on RH9 and FC1 it is placed under "System Settings". The GUI is pretty easy to understand, and you can use it to install things like mplayer, update things like gnome, etc...

As far as using the latest software with your old distro, you can use additional 3rd party repositories that are mentioned on the FreshRPMs site. HOWEVER, only stick to repositories that FreshRPMs garentees are compatible... otherwise you can end up back where you started, with versioning problems.

Really, the magic is more in the repositories than it is in apt or other package managers like yum. APT resolves dependencies, but the repository must supply a comprehensive set of packages such that the dependencies can be met and that any software you want is available.

With FC1 and FreshRPMs + crew (the 3 other repos FreshRPMs recommends as inter-compatible), I have been able to find EVERYTHING I needed through Synaptic.

If you want to upgrade distro versions, such as upgrade from 7.3 to 8.0, you might be able to do it using Synaptic, but don't take my word for it as I have never tried it myself. Maybe I will soon, as I have still have two RH9 computers.

Linux is ready for the desktop, but first everything has to be setup correctly. This isn't skipping around the problem as it should be acceptable to have, say FC1 installed on your average joe's computer along with Synaptic. That is something feasible for an OEM such as Dell to do. The user can then use and care for their system using Synaptic.

We have twice, over the past few years, attempted to contact Red Hat regarding site licensing or educational volume licensing for access to Red Hat Network. Both times the answer has been that -- unlike Sun, Microsoft, Apple, and our other OS suppliers -- Red Hat has no licensing programs for the education and science markets. For this reason, we have turned our Red Hat Linux users away from Red Hat Network and towards FreshRPMs APT as a source of regular software updates.

With the discontinuation of the Red Hat Linux product line, we are now at an impasse. We do not expect FreshRPMs to conjure up security and bug-fix updates for a system that will no longer be supported upstream. My clients would prefer a more guaranteed solution than FreshRPMs. However, Red Hat still shows no signs of interest in the education and research market. Fedora is not an option, as we can't expect our science staff to accept major upgrades every 2-3 months -- they are science nerds, not Linux nerds.

Is there any chance that your plans for Red Hat Enterprise Linux include site- and volume-licensing oriented at the educational and research community? For if not, my colleagues and I will have a hard row to hoe -- migrating existing Red Hat Linux users to supportable distributions such as SuSE or Mandrake.

Apt for Redhat (and fedora) is available.

As for compiling... almost every package I've compiled (a lot) (except GIS GRASS, which isn't exactly popular) was compiled with:

./configure
make
su root
make install

That said, I'm considering switching to deb for some of my machines now that I've learned the joy of apt-get (when I tried deb before I only knew about dselect)

Check out this for more details.

There's also a lot of extras at Freshrpms (although not updated for Yarrow yet).

Second, go check out Fedora.

Third, where you used to say 'up2date', start saying 'apt-get' or 'yum'.

Once you start using apt-get (or yum) for Red Hat *cough* I mean Fedora like you used to use up2date, you'll be grinning so hard, your face will cramp. :)

Chant the mantra baby, chant the mantra. "apt-get is good, apt-get is great, apt-get is good, apt-get is great...".

If you guys are so up in your panties about this move, go elsewhere for support. You can get updates elsewhere. I've successfully been maintaining servers in the 30 or 40 just using apt-get and kickstart -- for free.

Get started here:

Freshrpms.net
DAG RPMS
ATrpms
newrpms
KDE For Redhat/Fedora
JPackage
CCRMA (Karma)
Gstreamer
Kernel 2.6.0-test

And if you want up2date style GUI, get synaptic from ATrpms.

There are no plans for easier upgrades either (like apt-get dist upgrade), so you have to have downtime while you reboot from the CD

Incorrect. apt-get dist upgrade works just fine on RedHat systems running apt.

Or, you could just upgrade your fedora-release file and then "yum check-update". Or, if you have your up2date set up correctly, just update the fedora-release and then run up2date and let it handle the rest.

Don't spread the "must have a CD every 6 months" FUD, if you please.

Chill out. You can still use Redhat AND stay up to date using the same technology and methods that Debian users have enjoyed for years. Not only that, but it is free! Just install apt for rpm, synaptic (GUI frontend for apt), and make sure your sources.list is pointing towards freshrpms.net.

...get apt-rpm!

All that's required:

apt-get install mplayer mplayer-fonts mplayer-skins

Probably for the average newbie who doesn't want to compile things from source (okay, I admit, typing `emerge -u world' doesn't really require you to understand what's going on), having .deb and .rpm work together would be a good thing.

apt for redhat is a good idea, too, and I believe that can be found at freshrpms.net.

You need apt-get for rpm. We implemented this at work when we were upgrading to Redhat 9. It allows us to automatically apply updates without subscribing to RHN.

But our major goal with apt-get is to be able to automatically upgrade the entire distribution overnight when the next version of RedHat comes out. It will be less disruptive and generally neat if we can keep our systems at the latest version without having to stand around kickstarting every machine (There are about 50 of them).

We also looked into RHEL, but as far as the desktop goes, it doesn't seem like the best solution. The 18 month release cycle means that a lot of the fancy GUI stuff will go stale.

For example, RHEL 2.1 still uses GNOME 1.4. IMO, this makes the user experience more painful than it should be when versions of RedHat exist running the much more aesthetic GNOME 2.2. The same sort of thing will likely happen with RHEL 3.0's desktop in a year or so. One of the best and worst things about linux is its rapid pace of development.

That's all it takes. I installed yum from FreshRPMs, and no configuration was required.

If you issue the following two commands:

1. chkconfig yum on
2. service yum start

then any software you have installed will be kept up-to-date automatically, every night. It doesn't have to be hard to use Linux. Why do people insist on making it appear harder than it is? To frighten noobies?

Debian really is the way...

stop it
stop it
stop it
stop it
STOP IT

PLEASE

sheesh

I've used aptrpm for Red Hat Linux for quite a long time and it is great. Up2date seriously sucks...

the only time you ever need to boot is if you update the kernel

Not realy so :-), since Linux kernel is modular, you don't even have to reboot your system to fix some (even the last critical bug - ptrace - could be handled that way) issues. But this is certainly not the way that packages are made - they are monolithic. But if you must to have your systems up (!rebooted) you can fix almost everything using modules that for example catch the calls for buggy function etc.

What are the security implications of using apt-get? It doesn't seem that there are security checkpoints in place to make sure I'm not getting trojaned files.

To add insult to injury, there aren't even checksums for the apt rpms available at FreshRpms so I can't be sure I'm not getting a trojaned installer!

That sucks, but it is not unexpected. Red Hat does not want to open themselves to a lawsuit from the "owners" of mp3, and now that they are merged with Fedora, Fedora cannot distribute them either.

It's not a big problem though, as you can still easily get such packages from other compatible repositories such as freshrpms.

Its true about the mp3 and video stuff, this is due to Redhat avoiding things with "patent issues". But, if this was making you wonder about how useful RH9 is for media duties, wonder no more: take the freshrpms.net Three Step plan to Redhat media heaven and you'll be all set.

Step 1: Get and install apt for rpm

Step 2: apt-get update

Step 3: apt-get install xmms-mp3 mplayer mplayer-fonts mplayer-skins

That's it, mp3s, all kinds of video now work. You might need to make your file manager app use mplayer instead of a default app for the right file suffixes is all.

apt-get install frozen-bubble is a bunch of fun too. Check out freshrpms for the other things you can get that are not in stock Redhat.

Its true about the mp3 and video stuff, this is due to Redhat avoiding things with "patent issues". But, if this was making you wonder about how useful RH9 is for media duties, wonder no more: take the freshrpms.net Three Step plan to Redhat media heaven and you'll be all set.

Step 1: Get and install apt for rpm

Step 2: apt-get update

Step 3: apt-get install xmms-mp3 mplayer mplayer-fonts mplayer-skins

That's it, mp3s, all kinds of video now work. You might need to make your file manager app use mplayer instead of a default app for the right file suffixes is all.

apt-get install frozen-bubble is a bunch of fun too. Check out freshrpms for the other things you can get that are not in stock Redhat.

If the only reason you pay for Red Hat Network is to get automatic updates, I strongly suggest you look at apt-get for rpm. It provides the exact same updates as up2date, only they are free. If you don't trust them you can check the digital sigs on the packages; they come unaltered from Red Hat. Optionally, it can also provide additional packages not found on the Red Hat distribution.

Apt-get doesn't explicitly notify you when updates come in, however it is trivial to write a script to automate the process of checking for updates. For the super-lazy, you can even continue to use the free version of Red Hat's up2date notification icon to alert you when updates come in, and then use apt-get to actually fetch them.

Of course, there are probably other reasons you pay for RHN, such as technical support, a desire to give back to Red Hat, etc...

Just thought I'd make sure you know about an excellent free alternative.

The binaries available on the MPLayer site are pretty ancient - for Red Hat 7..x. If you're using Red Hat, you'll find the download sites / yum repositories / apt repositories at FreshRPMs or Fedora.

This is great, for a while I have been using cpan2flute which comes in an RPM from freshrpms to build my own RPMs from CPAN for my RedHat boxen, and this will save me from doing that :-)

Will there be an apt repository? I hope so :-)

Also will it be able to cope with ImageMagik -- probably the hardest Perl module to get working in my experience...

What's wrong with you guys?

# apt-get install myperl

http://apt.freshrpms.net/
http://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/

I am using a default desktop Redhat 9 install, with apt for rpm, and I used synaptic to install gmplayer from freshrpms (great free service btw).

Anyway, all I had to do was double-click on the file, and I was watching the trailer fullscreen, with post-processing, ultra clean image.

Mplayer works. You just have to install it correctly. If you have trouble installing software, and you are using Redhat, then stop waisting your time and get this! Once you install apt, run and update. Then apt-get install synaptic. After that you can use a GUI to search for mplayer. Install the 3 items that come up in the search results. After that, everything works.

How many times does it have to be said that RPM is not comparable to apt?

RPM is the package format, like dpkg (.deb). You should compare apt on Debian to up2date, Red Carpet, YaST, URPMI or even apt for RPM.

I am tired or Debian or (help us) Gentoo users raving about "RPM hell" out of ignorance. Debian with apt has some nice things going for it, including the amount of software available in "testing" and "unstable" (as compared to what is offered by RedHat through up2date or Ximian through Red Carpet). The same is true of Gentoo and portage. But please, people, give up this tired "RPM hell" argument.