APT is available for RPM based distributions (originally developed by Connectiva, but most useful on the biggest RPM based distribution - RedHatLinux).

All you need is the tool compiled for your version of RPM and access to a repository where rpm packages and their apt metadata can be downloaded from.

• The tool
• FreshRPM's page
• TuxFamily's repository
• A HOWTO by the authors
• Fedora

If you want to use Apt to get packages out of RawHide?, add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list

rpm http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/apt/ redhat/rawhide/en/i386 os

Problems with APT on RH9 after installing XimianDesktop

You get something like this

# apt-get upgrade Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these.

The following packages have unmet dependencies

db4: Obsoletes: db1 but 1.85-0.ximian.6.1 is installed

E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.

The solution is described at http://thomas.apestaart.org/linux/ximian-rh9-apt.php:

There's a slight issue with the combination of XimianDesktop 2, RedHatLinux 9 and AptForRpm. The issue is simple : db4 from stock RH9 obsoletes: db1. libdb1.so.* is provided by gnome-libs in RH9. Ximian has db1 as a standalone package.

APT seems to think this is an inconsistent state, and thus refuses to do anything unless you resolve the situation.

A simple workaround is to rebuild db4 and remove the obsoletes tag. That's the theory. In practice, db4 is hard to rebuild, but with some tweaking and using mach it worked out fine. So, if you want to, you can try installing the packages I built for db4.

Jeff Johnson, the RPM author, recommends to do this by running

rpm -Fhv *.rpm --repackage --nodigest --nosignature

so that you have repackaged RPMs that allow you to return to the previous state if something goes wrong. These end up in /var/spool/repackage.