Software Map

Dar is a shell command that makes backup of a directory tree and files. Its features include splitting archives over several files, DVD, CD, ZIP, or floppies, compression, full or differential backups, strong encryption, proper saving and restoration of hard links, extended attributes, file forks, Door inodes, and sparse files, remote backup using pipes and external commands (such as ssh), and rearrangement of the "slices" of an existing archive. It can run commands between slices, before and after saving some defined files or directories (for a proper database backup, for example), and quickly retrieve individual files from differential and full backups. Several external GUIs exist as alternatives to its CLI interface, like kdar, DarGUI, SaraB, etc.

Zero Install is a decentralized cross-distribution software installation system. It allows software developers to publish programs directly from their own Web sites, while supporting features familiar from centralized distribution repositories such as shared libraries, automatic updates, and digital signatures. It is intended to complement, rather than replace, the operating system's package management. 0install packages never interfere with those provided by the distribution.

CheckInstall keeps track of all files installed by a "make install" or equivalent, creates a Slackware, RPM, or Debian package with those files, and adds it to the installed packages database, allowing for easy package removal or distribution.

mkisofs is used for premastering iso9660 filesystems which are used on CDROMs. The output of mkisofs can then be sent to a CDROM writer with a utility such as cdrecord. It has support for many formats, including Rock Ridge, Joliet, and Apple HFS (beta).

ISO Master is an easy to use GUI CD image editor for Linux, BSD, and Windows. Basically, you can use this program to extract files from an ISO, add files to an ISO, and create bootable ISOs, all in a graphical user interface. It can open both ISO and NRG files, but can only save as ISO. It is based on bkisofs, a library for reading, modifying, and writing ISO images.

slapt-get is an APT-like system for Slackware package management. It allows you to search Slackware mirrors and third-party package sources (such as www.linuxpackages.net) for packages, compare them with installed packages, and install new packages or upgrade installed packages, all with a few simple commands.

The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X. It modifies Unix software so that it compiles and runs on Mac OS X and makes it available for download as a coherent distribution. Fink uses Debian tools like dpkg and apt-get to provide powerful binary package management. You can choose whether you want to download precompiled binary packages or build everything from source.

Conary is a distributed software management system for Linux distributions. It replaces traditional package management solutions (such as RPM and dpkg) with one designed to enable loose collaboration across the Internet. It enables sets of distributed and loosely connected repositories to define the components which are installed on a Linux system. Rather than having a full distribution come from a single vendor, it allows administrators and developers to branch a distribution, keeping the pieces which fit their environment while grabbing components from other repositories across the Internet.

radmind is a suite of Unix command-line tools and a server designed to remotely administer the file systems of multiple Unix machines. At its core, radmind operates as a tripwire. It is able to detect changes to any managed filesystem object, e.g. files, directories, links, etc. However, radmind goes further than just integrity checking: once a change is detected, radmind can optionally reverse the change. Each managed machine may have its own loadset composed of multiple, layered overloads. This allows, for example, the operating system to be described separately from applications. Loadsets are stored on a remote server. By updating a loadset on the server, changes can be pushed to managed machines.

mrepo (formerly known as Yam) builds a local APT/Yum RPM repository from local ISO files, downloaded updates, and extra packages from RHN (Red Hat Network) and 3rd party repositories. It takes care of setting up the ISO files, downloading the RPMs, configuring HTTP access, and providing PXE/TFTP resources for remote installations. It was primarily intended for doing remote network installations of various distributions from a laptop without the need for CD media or floppies, but is equally suitable for an organization's centralized update server.

makeself is a small shell script that generates a self-extractable compressed TAR archive from a directory. The resulting file appears as a shell script, and can be launched as is. The archive will then uncompress itself to a temporary directory and an arbitrary command will be executed (for example, an installation script). This is pretty similar to archives generated with WinZip Self-Extractor in the Windows world.