In order to make offline software installation even more available and easy, I've written a small vb.NET program that interprets and downloads .deb or .rpm packages in Windows.
Running this program requires vb.NET framework on the Windows PC, but that pretty much comes standard any more. And I'm going to work at porting it to C, so that it will run on any Windows machine, vb.NET or not.
I have a tutorial on the Ubuntu forums on how to use it, and the same procedure should (mostly) work for RPM based distros as well. Link here.

You can download the program from Sourceforge. There's a zipped .exe available, and also the source code as a .txt file, if you prefer to compile it yourself.

Hi,

I'm interested to know if you tried apt-offline and if so, what was the motivation for starting your project?

Evo2.

I haven't actually used apt-offline although I know how it works and have looked into it. My problem with apt-offline is that it requires Python, which isn't standard on Windows and can be buggy to install sometimes (in my experience). .NET framework is part of Windows updates, so any reasonably up-to-date computer should be able to run my program as is- and if not, .NET framework is very easily downloaded and installed. Think library or internet cafe computers.
Perhaps apt-offline is the real solution. I guess mainly I wrote my program as a programming challenge and to solve a need for myself and anyone else who'd rather not mess with Python on Windows.

Hi,

Understood. Thanks for the info.

Cheers,

Evo2.