Section 5.5. Summary

5.5. Summary

In this chapter, you learned to extend your knowledge of apt to RPM-based distributions. It is an alternative to the "dependency hell" often associated with installing RPM packages. The work of the Brazilian developers of the former Conectiva Linux have made this possible. You can now use apt to keep distributions, such as SUSE, Fedora, and even some Red Hat Enterprise Linux rebuilds, up to date.

The developers behind several distributions have configured their own apt repositories and have made them available online. Independent developers have configured additional apt repositories you can use and mirror locally on your network.

If an apt repository is not available for your distribution, you can create your own. You can still create a mirror of a standard repository on your network. With the genbasedir command and a little work organizing packages into local directories, you can create the databases which can make your local mirror useful as an apt repository.

In the next two chapters, we'll explore the major alternative to apt, known as yum.