Debian user, seeking advice about Fedora's package management options

[Thierry Sayegh]

Joe Emenaker wrote:

Joe,

> 
> 1 - Of the package tools that are now offered for Fedora (rpm, yum, 
> up2date, apt?, red-carpet, others?), which ones are able to 
> automatically get the package from the net? Which ones automatically 
> also get the dependencies? 
Yum or Apt are what you will be using and they will deal with the 
dependancies for you. Apt will be the best path for you I reckon :-)

> 
> 2 - I tried up2date once. It seemed like it was headed down the right 
> track of addressing the issues that I had with RedHat in the past, 
> regarding automatic downloads from a central source. However, it 
> *seemed* as though it was merely getting security-patched releases of 
> selected packages.
You will get both Foo & Bar, packages will be upgraded in a timely 
fashion and you can always exclude packages from being downloaded/select 
new ones.

> I install Debian 2 and run apt 
> regularly, as Debian 3 is nearing release, my machine would gradually be 
> picking up the new Debian 3 versions of packages as they passed testing. 

Well, up to recently I was running FC2 and FC3 on different machines. 
Different update paths as they were different releaxses.
An upgrade is effectively possible via yum/apt-get but would be a lot 
more tricky than doing an update via CD as you really need anaconda (the 
installer package) to be able to upgrade properly.
My case was easier as i have physical access to all my servers/workstations

>  For those using any of the
> automatic-package-and-dependency-download-and-install tools, 
> approximately what percentage of your packages (especially new versions 
> of packages) come from NON-official RedHat sources?

You will find plenty of mirrors around the world, "together with 
FreshRPMS, PlanetCCRMA and Dries, we're working towards a merge under 
the RPMforge umbrella" (http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/)

HTH
Thierry