[vox-tech] YAST equivalent on Debian?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bob Scofield (rscofield at afes.com):

> I have read that apt can be set up for any rpm-based distro.

This is thanks to third-party package repositories, and the porting work
done by Conectiva.  (Essentially, the back-end code to make the various
apt tools able to deal with rpm-format tools is a Conectiva-written
fork.)

> And my Googling has discovered the fact that there are even SuSE users
> using apt.  But of course these SuSE users have to somehow set up
> their package sources.

You download/install a canned sources.list file for that purpose inside
the RPM.

> My point, which you seem in part to agree with, is this.  In
> mid-April, a SuSE user can pay $59.99 for an upgrade version of SuSE
> 9.3.  That will get the user many nice things including an upgrade to
> KDE 3.4 and Open Office 2.0.  But the Debian users are going to
> upgrade to KDE 3.4 and Open Office 2.0 for free.

FYI:  The SUSE licensing model is often misunderstood, and leads to a lot of 
confusion and avoidable debate.  We tend to discuss that quite a bit on
the alt.os.linux.suse newsgroup, and I've FAQed the matter, here:  "SUSE
Product Stratetgy" on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Licensing_and_Law 

Your above comparison ignores the differences among SUSE editions, a
crucial matter.  E.g., SUSE Linux Professional Edition includes a number
of packages that are not licensed for redistribution but are included
only in retail boxed-sets.   

In addition, Novell/SUSE does phased rollouts of the various editions,
giving earlier access to new software to purchasers of each new release
of the boxed-set editions.  A few weeks later, it increments Ftp Edition
and the others.  As of that date, it's my understanding that anyone can
download either the (huge) Ftp DVD ISO or the (64MB) mini-installation
ISO[1] and run the image's upgrade routine to selectively upgrade whatever
packages he wants -- lacking only access to the non-redistributable
programs available only in boxed sets.

This past Saturday, a fellow was supposed to come by the CABAL meeting
at my house in Menlo Park with a copy of SUSE Linux Professional 9.1 to
install, and we would have then used the 9.2 mini-installation CD I'd 
downloaded for him, to grab sundry 9.2 packages.  But he didn't drop by.

> But I'll bet that Novell will never incorporate apt.  If it does, it
> will lose it's $59.99 update sales.

See, that depends on what Novell/SUSE makes available via apt, and what
it doesn't.  Which was exactly my point about Xandros.

[1] Current releases are at
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current/iso/ , and mirrors.