"Monotone — distributed version control system, using same concepts like other distributed VCS, like GNU Arch, Darcs and other. Work with Monotone from Emacs implemented by monotone.el package, that come together with Monotone distribution.

"The aim of the vcs-pkg project is to investigate the use of version control for distro package maintenance. We bring together people interested in taking the next step in distro package maintenance: the proper integration of version control into the package maintenance workflow..."

Sometimes, a utility or an application that you want to install is impossible to find in the format of your distribution. Alien is a utility that can convert one package type into another. It can get you out of a fix when you can't find a package for your distribution, and it is also useful for package maintainers who want to distribute packages for distributions that they don't run.

What’s the single biggest advancement Linux has brought to the industry? It’s an interesting question, and one that in my opinion has a very simple answer: Package management—or, more specifically, the ability to install and upgrade software over the network in a seamlessly integrated fashion—along with the distributed development model package management enabled.

"Since Linus Torvalds presentation at Google about git in May 2007, the adoption and interest for Distributed Version Control Systems has been constantly rising. We will introduce the concept of Distributed Version Control, see when to use it, why it may be better than what you're currently using, and have a look at three actors in the area: git, Mercurial and Bazaar..."

If you're on a Unix/Linux system and you don't have Ruby installed (or you want to upgrade), your distribution's package system may make a Ruby package available. On debian GNU/LINUX, it's available as the package ruby-[version]: for instance, ruby-1.8 or ruby-1.9. Red Hat Linux calls it ruby; so does the DarwinParts system on Mac OS X.

If you have an ubuntu/debian system , you can rebuild the deb file of any installed package. For this install the dpkg-repack package.

According to its developers, "Mercurial is a fast, lightweight Source Control Management system designed for efficient handling of very large distributed projects." Dozens of projects already use the software. Here's how you can get started with some basic version control tasks using Mercurial.

"I did translation of my article about working with distributed version control systems from Emacs using DVC package..." -- http://xtalk.msk.su/~ott/en/writings/emacs-vcs/EmacsDVC.html