yeah, package managers or such things...some distributions use them. like my Arch, it uses pacman (and srcpac these days too) that you can tell to what you want to, and it will check out if it's available in the given servers, download and install - including dependencies. gentoo has it's emerge, then there are things like apt-get etc. etc. etc...
rpms just are problem

or for me at least...there is a rpm-apt-get-thing, but some have said they don't know if it's reliable or how well it works..also up2date is some kind of thing, but I don't know anything more about it than it's name.
basically, without a package manager it might get difficult these days getting some packages installed...others go fine, but especially when it comes to updating some part of your system, it might get to be easier to either let it undone or get the whole system renewed than searching for dependencies for the rest of your life..unless you have some kind of program to calculate and automatically get the packages for you.
if you mean rpm packages (like those of RedHat's), then I don't really know...I stopped using RH at version 6 for myself...
dependecny hell is worse than the regular one...