After deciding that compiling Boxee for Fedora was quite a futile attempt, I installed Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) on my desktop PC, just to run it.

One of the first things I needed to do was install the latest updates for it. Thats when I realised that I didn’t know nuts about software installation in Ubuntu, other than it was apt-get something.

After reading up the ubuntu docs, and a little googling around, I’ve compiled a list of common tasks I do with yum on Fedora and its Ubuntu equivalents.

1. yum upgrade is apt-get upgrade

   This one is a little tricky. You should first run apt-get update to get the updated list of files in from the repository. Then follow up by the apt-get upgrade.

2. yum search packagename is apt-cache search packagename

   The indispensable yum search is apt-cache search. Good to look through the repositories to determine which package you need to install. Just like yum, you could search for terms or keywords, apt-cache will give you the packages that have matching descriptions.

3. yum info packagename is apt-cache show packagename

   Like yum info, this provides descriptions on the packages you want to install. An interesting addition comapred to Fedora is the Suggests: column, which gives you additional packages that you might want to install to enhance functionality of the program.

   Here’s a sample:-

   raja@atom:~/Examples$ apt-cache show mplayer
   Package: mplayer
   Priority: extra
   Section: multiverse/graphics
   Installed-Size: 10088
   Maintainer: Ubuntu MOTU Developers <ubuntu -motu@lists.ubuntu.com>
   Original-Maintainer: Ubuntu MOTU Media Team <motumedia @tauware.de>
   Architecture: i386
   Version: 2:1.0~rc2-0ubuntu17
   Replaces: mplayer-nogui
   Depends: libaa1 (>= 1.4p5), libartsc0 (>= 1.5.9), libasound2 (>> 1.0.17), libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.20.0), libaudio2, libaudiofile0 (>= 0.2.3-4), libc6 (>= 2.7), libcaca0 (>= 0.99.beta13b-1), libcairo2 (>= 1.2.4), libcdparanoia0, libcucul0 (>= 0.99.beta13b-1), libdbus-1-3 (>= 1.0.2), libdbus-glib-1-2 (>= 0.71), libdv4, libenca0 (>= 1.9), libesd-alsa0 (>= 0.2.35) | libesd0 (>= 0.2.35), libfaac0 (>= 1.26), libfontconfig1 (>= 2.4.0), libfreetype6 (>= 2.3.5), libfribidi0 (>= 0.10.9), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1), libggi2 (>= 1:2.2.2), libgif4 (>= 4.1.6), libgl1-mesa-glx | libgl1, libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.12.0), libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.14.1), libjack0 (>= 0.109.2), libjpeg62, liblircclient0, liblzo2-2, libmad0 (>= 0.15.1b-3), libmp3lame0 (>= 3.98), libmpcdec3, libncurses5 (>= 5.6+20071006-3), libogg0 (>= 1.0rc3), libopenal1 (>= 1:1.3.253), libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.21.6), libpng12-0 (>= 1.2.13-4), libpulse0 (>= 0.9.8), libsdl1.2debian (>= 1.2.10-1), libsmbclient (>= 3.0.24), libspeex1 (>= 1.2~beta3-1), libstdc++6 (>= 4.1.1), libsvga1, libtheora0 (>= 0.0.0.alpha7.dfsg-1.1), libvorbis0a (>= 1.1.2), libx11-6, libx264-59 (>= 1:0.svn20080408), libxext6, libxinerama1, libxt6, libxv1, libxvidcore4 (>= 1:1.0.0-0.0), libxvmc1, libxxf86dga1, libxxf86vm1, zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4), ttf-bitstream-vera, mplayer-skins, ttf-dejavu
   Suggests: w32codecs, libdvdcss, mplayer-doc, ladspa-sdk
   Conflicts: mplayer-nogui
   Filename: pool/multiverse/m/mplayer/mplayer_1.0~rc2-0ubuntu17_i386.deb
   Size: 4425834
   MD5sum: c34e4650c294bf0277d37432bdd81bde
   SHA1: da382398f120a0ecb421ac160d4d5676c081b27a
   SHA256: edf9c491e09c9f215a57db60df2ba94d17561ea20d890d576f5202a760dd5ad0
   Description: The Ultimate Movie Player For Linux
    It plays most mpeg, avi and asf files, supported by many native and win32
    DLL codecs. You can watch VCD, DVD and even DivX movies too. The other
    big feature of mplayer is the wide range of supported output drivers. It
    works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, but you can use SDL (and
    this way all drivers of SDL) and some lowlevel card-specific drivers (for
    Matrox/3dfx/SiS) too! Most of them supports software or hardware scaling,
    so you can enjoy movies in fullscreen.
    .
    This version includes the Gtk GUI
   Bugs: mailto:ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com
   Origin: Ubuntu
   </motumedia></ubuntu>

4. yum deplist is apt-cache showpkg

   Provides similiar information, giving you an idea of the additional dependencies required to run the program.

5. yum grouplist is tasksel –list-tasks

   Yum in Fedora has groups. So does Ubuntu. Finding it involved a little google-fu, but they work relatively the same. I sort of like the way tasksel lists its already installed / available packages. Seems more neat to me, eventhough new users may encounter a WTF??? moment looking at the the u & i prepended on the task names.

6. yum groupinfo a combo of 2 separate tasksel commands

   yum groupinfo gives you a description of the task or group, as well as a list of packages that need to be installed To get similiar info from tasksel, run tasksel –task-desc lamp-server to get a brief description on the task. e.g.

   raja@atom:~/Examples$ tasksel --task-desc lamp-server
   Selects a ready-made Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP server.

   To get a list of packages that task installs, run tasksel –task-packages taskname.

   raja@atom:~/Examples$ tasksel --task-packages lamp-server
   libwrap0
   apache2
   mysql-client-5.0
   tcpd
   libapache2-mod-php5
   apache2.2-common
   apache2-utils
   php5-common
   libaprutil1
   php5-mysql
   libmysqlclient15off
   libdbi-perl
   libplrpc-perl
   mysql-server
   openssl-blacklist
   libdbd-mysql-perl
   mysql-server-5.0
   libnet-daemon-perl
   libapr1
   libpq5
   ssl-cert
   apache2-mpm-prefork
   mysql-common

I guess that would be it for this post. I’ll post more if I find anything else that I may be missing.

Sources for my info:-

• Debian / Ubuntu tasksel: Install Group Software (tasks) such As DNS / Web Server In A Single Click
• The Debian Apt User Manual
• SwitchingToUbuntuFromLinuxRedHatEnterpriseLinuxAndFedora(A must read)