As part of an upgrade to Mandriva 2008.1 Spring, I noted that apt-get and aptitude are now available for this distro.

I am not sure of the implications of using this packaging system on the rpm based Mandriva distro, and rather than have arrows sticking out of my butt, I decided to ask here first.

Now, I have always like aptitude because it would tell me about obsolete packages in Ubuntu, which I then could remove - thus cleaning up some of the inevitable "digital detritus" that collects on systems over time.

My system has never been reloaded since Mandrake 7.2 (in 2001 or so), so there is without doubt a certain amount of digital debris accumulated on it, though I do occasionally make a pass through and try to eliminate some of that.

So now I look at Aptitude and it tells me about a bunch of obsolete packages on my system. Some of these seem to have version numbers that go waaaayyy back, and probably I can remove them (though I suppose I have to do some research first...)

My question is whether I can believe aptitude, given that it is a latter-day arrival on Mandriva.

Does anyone here have experience or opinions that I might be guided by? Can I trust it to get it right? Is there any particular thing I need to do to configure it so that it will tell me the truth reliably, before I go removing packages it claims are either broken or obsolete?

Any feedback would be appreciated.

The Debian packaging tools have always been available on various rpm based distros (including Mandriva when they bought Conectiva) although non except PCLinuxOS and derivatives use them by default. As to whether you can trust them, I don't see why not. There is a mini guide on this page for how to use apt/aptitude with Mandriva.

Well, you learn something new every day.

Thanks for the info.