One Package Installer to Rule Them All

For years, the disparity of Linux package installers (yum in Red Hat, urpmi in Mandriva, apt-get in Debian and Ubuntu, yast in Suse) had divided users of different distributions by forcing them to applications supported by an installer designed for their particular distribution, unless they were willing to compile the application from source code.  Now, a group of distribution developers has announced a project to unify installation methods to create one installer that will work on a variety of distributions.

This article from IT world points to a blog post by KDE programmer Frank Karlitschek describing the effort that may lead to creation of an AppStore for most Linux users. However it does not indicate if the developers are planning on working inside the framework of the Linux Standard Base, or creating an external standard for shared libraries.

If the effort becomes a reality, it may make Linux more popular among users, who just want to be able to install an application, and may also provide a way to increase the open source applications available to Windows users.