[ax0n]

FWIW, Debian's package manager (and its concepts of package repositories and dependency resolution) hasn't changed much since I tried it in 2001 -- and probably even earlier than that. Slackware and Red Hat were my first forays into Linux, and the dependency hell you speak of was enough to drive me to FreeBSD and OpenBSD in the late 1990s.

[hollerith]

Accidentally downvoted you while trying to upvote. Sorry.

[vacri]

My apologies - I thought apt started getting traction around 2004/05. Thanks for the info.