Customers and developers must be able to update or upgrade their base Linux distributions easily and without cost, regardless of their commercial Linux distribution. All software package dependencies should be resolved automatically when updating any of the software. The software installation and upgrade process must be safe, flexible, and reliable. By safe, I mean it should attempt to guarantee that the software is free of Trojans or other malicious changes to the original code. By flexible, I mean the installation software should allow you to install some upgrades by other means, such as compiling the code yourself without confusing the installation or upgrade process for other packaged software.
Reliability is rather self-explanatory.
The issue of update utilities Readers pointed out many alternatives to Debian's approach to updating and upgrading Linux systems. In particular, they mentioned that Conectiva has modified Debian's apt programs to work with RPM, so that you can update Conectiva the same way as Debian. At least one reader claims to be using Conectiva's version of apt to update his Mandrake distribution. Bravo to Conectiva for the port of apt. Click here for the full text.