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Four of them here. That's how many systems I've converted from running Ubuntu to Debian Squeeze in the last two months. Ubuntu had a great opportunity to pick up users during the years when Debian released too infrequently to be viable for the desktop, and no other Linux distribution was built on that base and targeting the desktop well. At this point I see no reason to ever consider Ubunut's latest unstable bling when there's both a two-year Debian release cycle and more regular desktop releases from distributions like Linux Mint.

Next stop: migrating CentOS server systems, another distribution I no longer have any taste for, to Scientific Linux. That the developers were so clueless that dag is giving up on them, there's another distribution that's lost its way.

Really?

Someone mentioned that they would be upset if their SSH sessions slow down. Well, just tunnel ssh over http http://dag.wieers.com/howto/ssh-http-tunneling/

And it's not even about that. From reading planet.centos.org, it seems there's only one real (non-crucial) issue at stake here: what he did with the money that came in.

The project lives on voluntary work (donated time and hardware), so it doesn't need the money. Nevertheless, there were website adds and PayPal donations which may have amounted to 4 figures, in euro, monthly (they don't know for sure).

That money ended up with Davis, and, while the project doesn't actually need them, they feel it was disingenuous of him to appropriate them.

The CentOS project does not have any recurring expenses, the project works with volunteers. And those volunteers pay with their own time, their own resources and sometimes travel expenses (for those who joined one of the promotion events). The project does get hardware and bandwidth donations and they are very valuable. In the end there is no need for money to keep the project running as-is.

But that of course does not mean that money couldn't help grow the project and that is why (I think) initially when the project was set up there was an effort to raise money. Google adsense, sponsorship on the website and even Paypal donations from users. How much, I cannot say because I don't know. I heard some vague numbers, likely in the 4 digits EUR range per month but real figures are only known by one person.

For at least three years people were donating money and sponsors were paying for website ads while the money was not flowing into the project, where it went to I can only guess. Raising the question was a risk to the project so everybody stayed quiet for the sake of the project hoping it would resolve itself. But this evidently has a burden on its volunteers, especially those that do invest their time and effort into the project.

mrepo does exactly what you want. It will mirror any package sources you want (including Redhat Network if you have a subscription) and automatically format a repository for yum or apt clients.

You only have to compile on one machine. After that, I can think, off the top of my head, of two options:

rsync

scp (Make sure you don't encrypt your key on a secure machine so you can run this in a script without having to type in your passphrase every time)

Or, if that bothers you, you can either roll your own RPM or use one of the various repositories out there on the net.

My issue with Ubuntu is that they release a beta but call it "stable". I don't want to be a beta tester of broken software. I want software that works. This is why I like CentOS; it works as long as I'm using compatible hardware (cue my rant of how it's a pain to backport new drivers to older kernels).

No problem.

Not that I advocate violating company policy. Just pointing out that it can be done. After all, a false sense of security can be worse than no security at all.

at least for some distros (primarily redhat heritage, also some suse capabilities) there's http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/mrepo/

there's also http://www.redhat.com/spacewalk/, the recently opensourced satellite spinoff - but it still requires oracle as a backend, so screw that ;)

Starting from reason one "We liked it better" there is nothing objective about this comparison.

Could be, but all that tells you is that the reasons for choosing Ubuntu over other distros weren't objective. If distro selection were dominated by objective reasons, we'd probably have fewer distros. Most people just pick the distros they like and feel comfortable with, based on past experience, and Wikipedia's admins are no exception.

"Unlike Debian stable, and like Fedora, it's updated fairly frequently so we get a decent rate of package updates for infrastructure..." Use RHEL/CentOs.

RHEL and CentOS have much slower update cycles than Ubuntu (even if a bit faster than Debian). With Ubuntu you have an upgrade path that gives you six-month-old software at worst, if you want it. If you stick only to LTS you have software as old as RHEL/CentOS, but nothing obligates you to do that: you can trade off between having to upgrade constantly and having new software easily available, upgrading every six months or every five years as you feel inclined. If you use RHEL/CentOS, you have old packages, period.

Besides Ubuntu updates have their fair share of screw ups too or did we already forget about the OpenSSL fiasco *COUGH* http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/13/1533212 *COUGH* ?

That's not upgrade-related, or at least not meaningfully. The breakage was a year and a half before the fix, and would likely have made it into stable version of even a fairly slow release cycle. That was a case of poor maintenance by Debian, not a case of updating incautiously. Even Debian stable might have been struck if the change had happened to be made a year or two later than it was.

" ...and Canonical actually puts out security updates for a decent amount of time." Have you seen the CentOs roadmap ? http://dag.wieers.com/blog/files/centos-intro-1.3-en.png So that means support until 2014. Thats one year longer then Ubuntu LTS, which goes to 2013 !!

That point was against Fedora, not CentOS. CentOS 1) has release cycles that are too slow, 2) is not the same version of Linux that the admins are using on their desktops. Fedora, on the other hand, 1) is so cutting-edge that it can break, and 2) does not provide long-term support (in the form of security updates, not talking about paid support here). Ubuntu occupies a happy middle ground: you can upgrade quite frequently if you like (although not as frequently as Fedora), or you can upgrade quite infrequently if you like (although not as infrequently as CentOS). It's quite stable (probably as stable as CentOS), but fairly up-to-date (although not as up-to-date as Fedora).

You have, it appears, attempted to interpret points made against Fedora or Debian as being the points made against CentOS and RHEL, which they aren't. I notice you addressed four out of the five points, skipping the one substantive objection to CentOS.

I can't begin to phantom why this post is +5 informative.

Because the mods probably figured out (I'm not sure if you have) that the poster is Brion Vibber, CTO of the Wikimedia Foundation and the one ultimately responsible for the choice of Ubuntu.

Starting from reason one "We liked it better" there is nothing objective about this comparison.

"Playing CentOS vs RHEL just feels like a big fat kludge and tells you there's something broken about the distro.)"
Why is that ? "just feels" i think you kind of nailed the sentiment there, "just feels". There isn't much of a technical difference between RHEL and Fedora besides that Fedora focuses on bleeding edge and RHEL on stability.

"Unlike Debian stable, and like Fedora, it's updated fairly frequently so we get a decent rate of package updates for infrastructure..."
Use RHEL/CentOs.

"...unlike Fedora, it's not so bleeding edge that things die all the time (SELinux breaking everything, yay!)"
Again use RHEL/CentOs. Besides Ubuntu updates have their fair share of screw ups too or did we already forget about the OpenSSL fiasco *COUGH* http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/13/1533212 *COUGH* ?

" ...and Canonical actually puts out security updates for a decent amount of time."
Have you seen the CentOs roadmap ? http://dag.wieers.com/blog/files/centos-intro-1.3-en.png So that means support until 2014. Thats one year longer then Ubuntu LTS, which goes to 2013 !!

I can't begin to phantom why this post is +5 informative.

You got it wrong:

"Every time Red Hat releases a hotfix, CentOS grabs the source and compiles it, sometimes weeks or months after Red Hat made it available."

There, fixed it for you.

Seriously, if you want to judge Red Hat's performance using a lagging-behind derivative distro, you are on crack. Even the CentOS guys recommend you to use RHEL if you're so picky about faster releases and/or fixes.

• When I merged two pieces of source code using Meld, I donated $10
• Upon finding out I could resize windows in Vim in an xterm, I donated $10, and another $5 when I found out how nicely it works together with X11 clipboards
• When my business started earning money, I donated to CentOS because that's what's installed on my servers
• When the Dag Wieers RPM repository had packaged a piece of software for me, he saved me an hour of work -- so I donated $10

... grinding that anti-MS axe.

Hey, that's not fair. I stand up for Microsoft now and then. Were those posts not helpful?

The Fine Article is about HP selling consumer desktop PCs with Linux, though. I don't what your post has to do with that but you anonymous cowards aren't getting astroturf points off of me today. Instead I'll provide informative topical discussion and foil your evil plot.

The original source for this story is apcmag. From that article:

Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest PC manufacturer, has announced it will start selling Linux-based PCs from $AU600 in Australia.

I can only hope this is a pilot, with PCs for the US market to follow. Like many of the people leaving comments on that story, I would like to buy some Linux laptops from HP here in the US. I would also like to see a choice of processors. This is a nice start though.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop also comes with OpenOffice preinstalled, Firefox for web browsing and Evolution for email.

That sounds like a full featured environment for the average user. Much better than Microsoft Works, a non-removable trial copy of Office and the usual collection of junkware that comes with a Windows PC. With compatible software vendors like this impressive list finding commercial software for your HP/Red Hat system should be no trouble. Dag has a whole bunch of free stuff available for it too. I imagine Windows users will have a hard time understanding that yes, you can just click on one of thousands of great free programs and it will install but it won't turn your PC into a spam zombie. It shouldn't take them long to get fond of it though. That's a significant change for people used to dealing with a software vendor that's proud that three quarters of a million of their customers were infested with root kits.

Windows gamers will be relieved to hear that for a measly $5/mo they can join Transgaming and play Windows games. If they have Windows programs they don't want to throw away like one of these, Wine will be a nice free addition to their Red Hat desktop. If they prefer a professionally maintained compatibility engine they might like Codeweavers' Crossover Linux which supports these programs and only costs $40.

The list of hardware known to be compatible with RHEL 5 is impressive, as is the list of systems that are certified and supported.

Disclosure - I also don't work for anybody mentioned here or sell their stuff. My opinions belong to me and I'm not getting paid to have them. YMMV, yadda yadda.

The choice of Red Hat as a partner in this venture shows just how GNU/Linux

I cannot vouch for Fedora, but I have to agree with the problems you are referring to with regard to RedHat (well that, and I am still pissed about how they ended by support contract prematurely immediately following the release of RH9). That is why I use CentOS almost exclusively, with yum rather than up2date. As far as all those packages you are missing is concerned, I have had extremely good luck with the rpmforge repository.

is there's so many to choose from

http://dag.wieers.com/howto/ssh-http-tunneling/

Dag

Cheers! /P

If you just want updates, upgrade to 7.3 and use fedoralegacy.org updates. (Though it looks like they are going to discontinue them at the end of the year. It looks like it may be time to consider upgrading, if you don't want to do your own security updates...)

There are a few other repos, but it looks like they are in the process of merging their repositories to rpmforge.net. There's a package list here, and links to the 3 seperate repositories:

http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/rpmforge.php

DAG provides packages for RH7, but not all of the others do.

There's also another potentially useful Yum repo run by NORLUG:

http://norlug.org/rpms/

A lot of people I talk to say they don't like Linux due to lack of driver support. Is there anyway you see this problem being eliminated? How do you court vendors to support their hardware on your flavor of Linux?

I used to be a big RH fan until my personal subscription was cancelled early around the end of RH9 days. I struggled with Fedora for a while, but it was always flaky and updates seemed to break more than they fixed. I moved to Slackware... which I liked for the same reasons I really liked Gentoo -- it was easy to install packages from source; however neither of those distros is as easy to manage in a commercial setting as other more popular distros.

Then a colleague mentioned CentOS and I have not looked back. CentOS3 is still 2.4 kernel based and would be a good replacement for the older RH7x/8x/9x versions. CentOS4 is 2.6 kernel based and a great distro. I have moved everything I had from RH to CentOS and not looked back.

I even use CentOS4 on my work desktop with the KDE-RedHat repository and the Dag Wieers repository supplying packages for software that RH/CentOS do not.

I think I am going to revisit Kubuntu in the near future though, because I do like apt, I simply cannot stand Gnome (no offense - I simply prefer KDE).

I'm not talking about the DVD and MP3 stuff as that is not installed by default in a lot of distros (DVD especially). I'm saying that Fedora has fewer packages available for it than other distros which is why people still run into problems installing stuff on it. eg.

Fedora OS + Extras + Livna + Dag (RPMForge) = ~6000 unique packages (ftp://mirror.linux.duke.edu/pub/fedora/linux/core /5/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS + http://fedoraproject.org/extras/5/i386/repodata/ + http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/5/i386/ + http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/)

Mandriva main + contrib + PLF = ~13000 unique packages (urpmq --list | wc -l)

Debian stable = 15490 unique packages (Debian.org)

Gentoo = nearly 11000 in portage (http://gentoo-portage.com/Statistics)

absolutely right. It killed Netware completely by offering all the network functionality with an operating system! No more installing drivers (ie buying an OS and then buying a NOS, just buy NT and have both).

Similarly, NT drove off commercial Unixes - you never hear about AIX or HPUX anymore.

However, the factors that made the NT market (ie cheap whilst still being good enough for purpose) should be the factors that make Linux kill NT in just the same way. The trouble is, that Linux doesn't provide all that - although its price trounces Windows, and its feature set is damn good, it just doesn't have the 'polish' or the standardisation that matters to a business. No business will go Linux for general purpose use (ie, if you standardise on a distro to run a particular app, then you're fine, but you have a controlled ecosystem) where users use it to do everything because it doesn't have the "shrink-wrapped" approach to apps. You can't buy an app and expect it to work on your distro, because maybe it isn't readily supported on that.

This is the big issue, and it keeps Linux in the realm of the hobbyist market (we'll ignore the outsourced, this-is-what-you'll-get approach from a big consultancy). If Linux wants to be taken seriously, the prime things it has to get right are standardisation on some simple features (eg basic directory structure), and binary installers. No 'just ./configure and ./compile', just 'yum install xyz'. (or apt-get, I don't care which) that can install anything.

Once those 2 things are there, so I can take a binary package and install it on whichever distro I use (its Linuix after all, isn't it? - at least that's what Joe User will say) then Linux will be accepted a lot more readily. And once that happens, NT will have to watch its market share, just like Netware once had to.

So rant over :) go support LSB and http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/FAQ.php#A1

Keep the thing updated, and set auto-updates to do dry-runs and email you what they could do. ... I actually have a nice shell script for that ... ask me and I'll post it online for you.

Yes, please post it or email it ... I've got a dozen or so Debian servers that could benefit from it regardless of the new storage box. Thanks in advance.

I run this from a bash script /etc/cron.daily/apt-update which delays 30-60 minutes and then runs the main script. Note that $RANDOM, and the hash function need bash and won't work in dash/sh. The cron script's code looks like this: sleep $(($RANDOM % 30 + 30))m && /usr/local/sbin/apt-update -m ... I'm not even going to try to put my apt-update script here as a slashdot comment.

This is my first public release of apt-update, released under the GPL. Also note there are other similar solutions, like apticron and cron-apt, both of which are in the Debian stable repository, but both of which seemed more code than is needed (and they are primarily for actually performing the upgrades, which is dangerous).

On RHEL/CentOS, Fedora, and other APT-capable distributions, this script will work fine. There is one snag; the script searches for "security" in the dry-run install ... DAG/Dries/RPMForge, FreshRPMS, CentOS, and ATrpms don't have a specially reserved source for security the way Debian does, so this won't work. Also of note, Axel Thrimm's atrpms package for most Fedora/RHEL derivates includes a script called "check4updates" which was the inspiration for my script. ... it is a bit more basic, but it uses what it can find of up2date, yum, apt, and smart.

Umm, didn't you notice that Fedora is the development testbed? It's supposed to update quickly so new things get tested before RedHat gives them to paying customers. If you're doing real work on Fedora, I feel your pain. Switch your servers to Centos, and save Fedora for playing on your desktop!
Centos + Dag Wieers' repo is a sweet setup. Dag, if you read this, thanks a lot for great packages.

Fedora (as the biggest example) *does* exist "merely at the sufferance of a corporate entity". If Red Hat stopped supporting it tomorrow, it would be gone faster than you can say "Red Hat Linux 9.0".

I don't really understand the RPM hell some people are talking about all the time. I'm usually running Debian at home, but at work we got differents versions of RedHat. When I need some software, either I use an RPM that is supposed to work on that version of RedHat if I find one (the RPMs from RedHat, apt-get with the dag apt rpm repository or some home-made RPMs mainly), or I compile it myself. And it's working fine.

I had no problem installing Inkscape 0.41 on Fedora Core 2 using their i686 "static" RPM. However, with 0.42, the RPM is now linked against libgc.so.1, which is not shipped with Fedora Core (any release, 1 to 4). So I trundled off to Dag Wieers repository, downloaded the Fedora Core 2 libgc RPM, installed it and now I'm getting "undefined symbol: g_option_error_quark". Lovely stuff - looks like I'm going to have to compile from source <sigh>. I think the Inkscape folks need to rebuild their RPMs...

Anyone know if the 'Minimal' install set requires more CDs? One could set everything else up from a repository...

I used to be an all out Debian Lover (still am), but also an anti-redhat biotch...

And well, i found this:

http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/

You can add that to up2date and almost all thats missing in rhel is there (mono, for example).

Also, i found out that up2date --install {whatever} and up2date --get-available andwell... up2date really is very workable... even for someone comming from debian.

It actually has some advantages regarding package signing (for example) although im shure debian has most of that as well...its just not used to muchdue to the size of the distro.

I have reconciliated with redhat... and i hope they make the right move with fedora and more strongly support it and repositories like dag's

Here's the one side of the story. That guy is doing pretty good job of building rpms, so his and other compatible ones is what I use. Never had any issues with them.

I used Redhat & Fedora for years. I'd always try a new distro, but I'd end up coming back. And I tried a lot of them, including Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo and Suse.

When Fedora.US first launched, and then was subsumed into Redhat, a lot of user submitted files and extras just seemed to disappear.

Dags and Freshrpms were probably the best place to get the stuff RH didn't supply for Fedora, but even though they're interoperable, I wouldn't say either of them are community driven.

Ubuntu is the first distro that's kept me from coming back to Fedora. From ease of use, it's just as good, if not better, than Fedora. It just seems to do so many small things that Fedora wanted to do, but didn't. Ubuntu ships on one CD, has the power of APT (don't get me started on Yum, and I used APT for years on Fedora / RH w/Freshrpms), and Ubuntu has that community feel to it, even if it is a millionaire funding 'em.

Sorry Red Hat, you came close for many years, but in the end, close wasn't good enough.

DAG and other repositories can also be your friend. Livna doesn't mix well with anything except fedora.us.

Well, I don't know what "mere mortals" you know, but in my college 471 network lab class we are using RedHat 7.3 (IDK Why, the school refuses to upgrade).

Probably your school refuse to upgrade because it take time your techs may not have, and involve a certain risk they are not willing to take. RH 7.3 was a pretty good and solid release, but its time have passed. It's like the Windows 98 of Linux; a lot of people use it as it was very widely deployed, but its time have passed and you would rather use something else today. You should remind your school administration that this release does not receive any more update, which may leave it open to some security bugs (unless they use the update service of Progeny, that is).

One of my classmates has spent the entire semester till now trying to install FireFox with no success. Everyone else is stuck using Mozilla 0.9 that came with it as we cannot seem to install any software not specially prepared by the instructor.

According to rpm.pbone.net, Dag's repo have an rpm of FireFox 1.0 for RedHat 7.3. Enjoy !

These are Computer Information System majors, who have taken programming classes, data communication classes, and have done projects with various software to get to a high 400 level class. We cannot get software to install on linux reliably.

I know some of them myself. A CS degree actually mean very little when it come to actual computer usage and troubleshooting. Certainly mean you're pretty smart, but that's about it.

And why do I need a program to install a program? It just doesn't make any sense.

It depend how you see it. You need a web browser to chase down freeware on the Internet, is'nt it ironic too ?

In the end, if using a package manager make your life easier ... why not ?

Well, I don't know what "mere mortals" you know, but in my college 471 network lab class we are using RedHat 7.3 (IDK Why, the school refuses to upgrade).

Probably your school refuse to upgrade because it take time your techs may not have, and involve a certain risk they are not willing to take. RH 7.3 was a pretty good and solid release, but its time have passed. It's like the Windows 98 of Linux; a lot of people use it as it was very widely deployed, but its time have passed and you would rather use something else today. You should remind your school administration that this release does not receive any more update, which may leave it open to some security bugs (unless they use the update service of Progeny, that is).

One of my classmates has spent the entire semester till now trying to install FireFox with no success. Everyone else is stuck using Mozilla 0.9 that came with it as we cannot seem to install any software not specially prepared by the instructor.

According to rpm.pbone.net, Dag's repo have an rpm of FireFox 1.0 for RedHat 7.3. Enjoy !

These are Computer Information System majors, who have taken programming classes, data communication classes, and have done projects with various software to get to a high 400 level class. We cannot get software to install on linux reliably.

I know some of them myself. A CS degree actually mean very little when it come to actual computer usage and troubleshooting. Certainly mean you're pretty smart, but that's about it.

And why do I need a program to install a program? It just doesn't make any sense.

It depend how you see it. You need a web browser to chase down freeware on the Internet, is'nt it ironic too ?

In the end, if using a package manager make your life easier ... why not ?

"dag" is an rpm repository:
http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/
This link gets you up and running. Basically you add the repo to your apt sources list.
http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/FAQ.php#B
Hope that helps.

"dag" is an rpm repository:
http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/
This link gets you up and running. Basically you add the repo to your apt sources list.
http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/FAQ.php#B
Hope that helps.

I wonder what the MPAA found? A tar.gz file, an rpm? If their agents are so idiotic to chase after something called python-twisted-1.3.0-1.1.fc2.dag.i386.rpm without checking if it is a film then they should be made to suffer by forcing the issue into court. Let the MPAA engage a lawyer in Oz and and then show them to be wasting the court's time.

It's already there.

The catch of course is that you have to be running bind locally to make it work. Which is fine if you're a unix-head and know how to work dns, but for the average joe, it's far from simple. I have a perl script that checks my Linksys firewall's IP every half hour, and if it's changed, updates the dns file, then runs nsupdate.

Some of you guys may not suggest Fedora for a linux beginner, but wait, I have seen quite a few users hop on to linux, completely abandoning Windows right with Fedora Core 1, and they are actuallly happy with it!
Installing applications are not that hard unlike the earlier days. I recommend rpm.pbone.net to find your applications packaging for Fedora, I have been 99.99% successfull! And with the brand new Yum, staying upto date is always a breeze.
I also recommend adding Dag Wieers repository in your yum configuration and this particular one releases very useful applications/updates. Needless to stay, once you load fancy themes and eye-candy like gDesklets you really can grab the eyes of people around you while giving you a pleasurable user experience.

use x0rfbserver instead. it lets you connect to an existing X session with VNC, instead of having to spawn a new Xvnc session from vncserver.

It's available as part of a Dag Wieers RPM, so if you're running Red Hat or Fedora Core you're set. And of course the source is a google away.

The main problems I have had are the lack of MP3 support out of the box, and no default inclusion of niceties like flash, nvidia drivers, and java (I know they are not open source but a quick-download utility to get them separately would be nice).

/x

There are a couple of other good repositories that have FC2 packages out now .

Samba is included, as is the new CIFs driver which replaces smbfs. What isn't included is the NTFS read-only driver module, which you can download as a binary RPM from linux-ntfs. As for the other stuff, I like to use the fedora.us + livna.org* repositories. There is also freshrpms, ATrpms, Dag Wieers, and Planet CCRMA. There are others, and be warned that Dag Wieers and Axel Thim (atrpms) are in a pissing match over Dag obsoleting at least one of Axel's packages for naming it "wrong". (look at the April acrhives of the freshrpms mailing list with some fresh popcorn).

* - The livna.org front page still says they are down and lists the mirror. The rpm.livna.org repo is actually back up, they just never bothered to update the main page to say so.

Try yam for that. It's easy to set up and does everything you need to do to make it work (even for updates and 3rd party repositories).

Yam homepage

You usually can get this from Dag or Fedora.us but they don't have packages ready yet

Point yum (/etc/yum.conf) at my isp's yum repository, also add references to Dag Wieer's repository and rpm.livna.org.

sudo yum check-update

then

sudo yum update

Then install java and flash player.

Eric S. Raymond has authored a nice guide entitled: Fedora Multimedia Installation HOWTO

Cause its fun!

Red Hat / Fedora packages at Dag's apt repository

I ordered my T40p with the optional 802.11a/b/g card (standard is a/b) and installed FC1

The DAG Apt Repository for RedHat 9 has a MadWifi driver module for 2.4.20; just install it through Synaptic. It works well on my ThinkPad T40.

• kernel-module-thinkpad
• tpctl
• configure-thinkpad

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..