Chris!

urpmi is by no means proprietary. It is totaly open source. If you use it you definitely will not be locked into Mandrake. That's a totally wrong idea.

As for your problems with installing apt. Do you really have urpmi sources set up? Did you set up contrib repository? Try

#urpmq --list-media

to see if contrib is among them.
apt and libapt are in contrib. No need to manualy download anything. I just tried it:

#urpmi apt

and voila. No need to go to rpmfind or anything.

About urpmi complaining about not having libapt even after you had installed it. Maybe you should rebuild your rpm database.

#rpm --rebuilddb

Then try

#rpm -e apt

Set up contrib in urpmi and the try

#urpmi apt

urpmi is by no means proprietary. It is totaly open source. If you use it you definitely will not be locked into Mandrake. That's a totally wrong idea.

Name one other Linux distro that comes with urpmi.

Try

#urpmq --list-media

to see if contrib is among them.
apt and libapt are in contrib. No need to manualy download anything. I just tried it:

#urpmi apt

and voila. No need to go to rpmfind or anything.

About urpmi complaining about not having libapt even after you had installed it. Maybe you should rebuild your rpm database.

#rpm --rebuilddb

Then try

#rpm -e apt

Set up contrib in urpmi and the try

#urpmi apt

Much easier to install SuSE instead.

Thanks for the input, though.

Chris!

Just to clear a few things.

urpmi is under GPL. That means anybody can port it to any other distribution. It's a relatively new tool so nobody has done that yet. But in future we may see other distros using it. Just a few years ago the situation was the same with apr. It was strictly debian thing. No other distro had it. Does that mean it was proprietary? Certainly not. By the way, nothing that comes with debian is proprietary and Mandrake follows the same philosophy (they both use only GPL stuff). But you obviously chose the one distro that doesn't. SuSE uses mainly GPL stuff, but the one thing that differentiate it from other distros - YAST2 - is not GPL.

So while you don't see urpmi in any other distro at the moment, you will never see YAST2 in any other distro than SuSE.

I'm not saying that Mandrake is in any way better than SuSE. I'm not bashing SuSE for not being 100% GPL. But you're not being consistent in your actions. Bashing Mandrake for using proprietary stuff and then running to the distro that has proprietary stuff in their core.

All that said, I really hope you find the right distro for you. That's one of the beauties of linux - choice. What's good for me might not be good for you but that doesn't mean we can't both enjoy in what we like.

Bashing Mandrake for using proprietary stuff and then running to the distro that has proprietary stuff in their core.

Every major distro has a proprietary installation scheme.

As of now, no one else has picked up urpmi and it lacks the snazzy UI that is synaptic. If it's possible to install apt on Mandrake I wasn't able to figure out how. With SuSE, apt and synaptic practically installed themselves. So which distro do you think I'm going to go with?

I'm sorry to say, Chris, but you don't know what you're talking about. Saying that every distro has a proprietary installation scheme is way off. And YAST2 is far more than just an installation scheme. Without YAST SuSE is not SuSE. Try uninstalling it

Before you make a claim please check the facts. urpmi has a very nice GUI. It's a part of Mandrake control center. If you cared to check you would've found it under (who would have thought?!?) "Software management". And in the menu under Configuration/Packaging there's all you need: Install, Remove, Update, Sources Manager - all for urpmi). You did check there, right?

Once again, have fun with SuSE and their proprietary stuff, but don't spread lies and misinformation about the things you don't know.

urpmi has a very nice GUI. It's a part of Mandrake control center. If you cared to check you would've found it under (who would have thought?!?) "Software management". And in the menu under Configuration/Packaging there's all you need: Install, Remove, Update, Sources Manager - all for urpmi). You did check there, right?

I stand corrected; I did invoke the GUI (RPMDrake?) and even set up a couple of repositories in it, yet it did not work anywhere as smoothly as apt/synaptic.

don't spread lies

Don't accuse me of dishonesty. I'd forgotten about RPMDrake(?) when I wrote that and freely admit so, but there was no intent on my part to deceive.

I know you didn't intend to spread false information, so "lies" was a bit too strong a word. I'm glad we ironed things out, not just because the two of us but for people - especially newbies - who might read this thread.

BTW, I'm sure it would be a useful information if you told us about your experience with apt/synaptic on SuSE versus YAST software manager.