"It is usually, except in SuSE flavors (and we also used SLES at oldjob), pretty easy to match up rpms to a redhat version and more difficult in a debian or ubuntu environment. Both package management environments aren't the best (apt-/dpkg vs yum/rpm), though I think redhat gets the tip because apt-cache and dpkg --get-selections are just weird to anyone not used to them."
When Debian is installed it's configured to point to the specific repository for that release, such as Wheezy, which I'm currently running. So every package I can see in the repository is a Wheezy package. It also seems that maybe you don't understand the Debian pkg mgmt system very well. There isn't a "dpkg --get" command, there's however "dpkg -i" which is similar to the "rpm -i" command to install a specific package and manually deal with any dependencies. "apt" is akin to "yum" in that it will attempt to install the package and any dependencies. "Apt-get" is the command you were thinking of. Aptitude provides more pkg. mgmt intelligence than "apt" and is the officially sanctioned package manager, which you didn't mention. "apt-cache" is for searching through the apt software package cache and getting package info. I rarely use it. For me, the pkg mgmt system played a huge factor in my distro choice. The APT package mgmt system and all its tools make so much sense to me. are so easy to use and useful. Crunchbang (Debian Wheezy w. Openbox) runs in less than a 150 MB and that makes me squeal w. joy! I guess that's what makes Linux so great, there's a flavor for everyone. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
