Chapter 10: Yes, Yet Another Way

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Overview

Downloading, Installing, and Updating Programs with APT and Synaptic

You’ve learned how to install RPM packages via the Package Manager and directly via the double-click method. However, believe it or not, there is yet a third way, called APT (Advanced Package Tool), to install new RPM-based software. In fact, anyone familiar with the Linux Debian distro or with the Fink program on Mac OS X will probably already be familiar with the APT program.

The Debian version of APT is designed to download special Debian APT packages from which it installs a program and all its dependencies. These APT packages, however, do not work on Fedora because they are not RPMs. There is, however, a special variation on the original Debian version of APT that is designed to work on RPM-based systems, such as Fedora Core. APT connects to an RPM repository on the Internet and then downloads all the programs you select, as well as the dependencies for those programs. The programs are downloaded as RPM files, which APT then installs on your system.

APT is a very easy, safe, and foolproof way of installing programs, because nothing will go missing, and it makes dependency hell pretty much a thing of the past. Of course, not every program or file is available in an APT repository, so the other methods you have learned so far are not for naught. There are also still other applications that are not available as RPMs at all, but you will learn how to deal with those in the next chapter. Nevertheless, there are plenty of files that you can download and install, or (very importantly) just update, via APT.

The one thing about APT that some people might consider a problem is that it is a command-driven application. This means that you have to run it via commands in the Linux Command Terminal. Fortunately, you can avoid this more cumbersome way of doing things by installing the program Synaptic, which is a graphical front end for APT. Synaptic allows you to use APT graphically, and thus quite easily.

Finally, there are a variety of APT repositories on the Internet, and the version of APT offered at these various repositories is usually preconfigured to download RPMs from that particular repository. In addition, the packages from one repository are not guaranteed to be compatible with those from another, meaning that conflicts could occur if you mix files from different repositories (though I must admit to having never had problems myself in this regard). To stay on the safe side and keep things convenient, user-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing, we will be using the repositories at Freshrpms for APT, and for RPMs not available from Freshrpms, we will use, whenever possible, the Freshrpms- compatible DAG repository, from which you will download several RPMs while performing some of the projects in this book.



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Linux for Non-Geeks. A Hands-On, Project-Based, Take-It-Slow Guidebook
Linux for Non-Geeks: A Hands-On, Project-Based, Take-It-Slow Guidebook
ISBN: 1593270348
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 188

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