I've got ths Linux box at work that I use occasionally. It was built using one of our "offcial" images, but I recently found out that the automated updating process wasn't hitting this particular machine. "I thought you were updating that box youself..." is what I heard. So a-patching I will go.

Since it's a Red hat 7.3 machine, it's no longer supported by Red Hat's up2date service. So installing apt seemed like a good solution. Turns out this machine was more out of date than I had imagined:

wrhodes@foo:/tmp $ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Calculating Upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded
4Suite Canna Canna-devel Canna-libs FreeWnn FreeWnn-common GConf GConf-devel ImageMagick LPRng ORBit ORBit-devel Omni Omni-foomatic PyXML SDL SDL_image SDL_mixer SDL_net SysVinit VFlib2 VFlib2-devel WindowMaker WindowMaker-libs Wnn6-SDK Wnn6-SDK-devel XFree86 XFree86-100dpi-fonts XFree86-75dpi-fonts XFree86-ISO8859-15-100dpi-fonts XFree86-ISO8859-15-75dpi-fonts XFree86-ISO8859-2-100dpi-fonts XFree86-ISO8859-2-75dpi-fonts XFree86-ISO8859-9-100dpi-fonts XFree86-ISO8859-9-75dpi-fonts XFree86-cyrillic-fonts XFree86-devel XFree86-libs XFree86-tools XFree86-twm XFree86-xdm XFree86-xfs Xaw3d Xaw3d-devel Xconfigurator a2ps abiword alchemist amanda amanda-client ami ami-gnome apel apmd arpwatch arts aspell aspell-ca aspell-da aspell-de aspell-en-ca aspell-en-gb aspell-es aspell-fr aspell-it aspell-nl aspell-no aspell-pt aspell-pt_BR aspell-sv audiofile audiofile-devel aumix authconfig autoconf autoconvert autoconvert-xchat autofs automake autorun balsa bash bc bg5ps binutils bison blas blas-man bonobo bonobo-devel bug-buddy bzip2 bzip2-devel bzip2-libs cWnn cWnn-common cdecl cdlabelgen cdp cdparanoia chkconfig cipe console-tools control-center control-center-devel cpio cpp cracklib cracklib-dicts ctags curl curl-devel cyrus-sasl cyrus-sasl-devel cyrus-sasl-md5 cyrus-sasl-plain dateconfig db1 db1-devel db2 db3 db3-devel db3-utils ddd ddskk dhcpcd diffutils docbook-style-dsssl docbook-utils docbook-utils-pdf dos2unix dosfstools doxygen dump e2fsprogs e2fsprogs-devel ed eel efax eject emacs emacs-leim enscript esound esound-devel expat expat-devel fam fam-devel findutils firewall-config flex foomatic fortune-mod freetype freetype-devel ftp fvwm2 fvwm2-icons gaim gal galeon gawk gcc gcc-c++ gcc-chill gcc-g77 gcc-java gcc-objc gdbm gdbm-devel gdk-pixbuf gdk-pixbuf-devel gdk-pixbuf-gnome gdm gedit gettext gftp ghostscript giftrans gimp gimp-devel glade glibc glibc-common glibc-devel gmp gmp-devel gnome-applets gnome-audio gnome-audio-extra gnome-core gnome-core-devel gnome-games gnome-games-devel gnome-libs gnome-libs-devel gnome-print gnome-utils gnome-vfs gnome-vfs-extras gnorpm gnumeric gnupg gnuplot gphoto gpm gpm-devel gq grep groff groff-perl grub gtk+ gtk+-devel gtk-engines gtkhtml guile gzip hdparm hotplug htmlview hwbrowser ical imap indent indexhtml info initscripts ipchains iproute iputils jadetex jisksp14 joe kWnn kakasi kakasi-devel kbdconfig kdbg kdeaddons-kate kdeaddons-kicker kdeaddons-konqueror kdeaddons-noatun kdeadmin kdeartwork kdeartwork-locolor kdebase kdebindings kdebindings-kmozilla kdelibs kdelibs-devel kdepim kdevelop kdoc koffice kon2 kon2-fonts krb5-devel krb5-libs krbafs krbafs-devel ksconfig ksymoops kterm kudzu kudzu-devel lapack lapack-man less lesstif lesstif-devel lha libao libao-devel libcap libgal7 libgcj libgcj-devel libglade libglade-devel libgnomeprint15 libgtop libgtop-devel libjpeg libjpeg-devel libmng libmng-devel libogg libogg-devel libole2 libpcap librep librep-devel librsvg libstdc++ libstdc++-devel libtabe libtabe-devel libtiff libtiff-devel libtool libtool-libs libungif libungif-devel libuser libvorbis libvorbis-devel libxml libxml-devel libxml2 libxslt licq licq-gnome licq-kde lm_sensors locale_config lockdev lockdev-devel logrotate logwatch lokkit losetup m4 magicdev mailcap man-pages mc mew mingetty miniChinput mkbootdisk mkinitrd mktemp mkxauth mount mouseconfig mozilla mozilla-chat mozilla-devel mozilla-dom-inspector mozilla-js-debugger mozilla-mail mozilla-nspr mozilla-nspr-devel mozilla-nss mozilla-nss-devel mozilla-psm mpage mpg321 mt-st mysql mysql-devel mysql-server nautilus nautilus-mozilla ncftp ncompress ncurses ncurses-devel net-tools netpbm netpbm-devel netpbm-progs newt newt-devel nfs-utils njamd nmap nmap-frontend nscd ntp ntsysv nvi-m17n nvi-m17n-canna oaf oaf-devel octave openjade pam pam-devel pam_krb5 parted passwd patch pax pciutils pciutils-devel pcre pcre-devel pdksh perl perl-CGI perl-CPAN perl-DB_File perl-DateManip perl-Digest-MD5 perl-File-MMagic perl-HTML-Parser perl-HTML-Tagset perl-MIME-Base64 perl-NDBM_File perl-Parse-Yapp perl-Storable perl-URI perl-XML-Dumper perl-XML-Encoding perl-XML-Grove perl-XML-Parser perl-XML-Twig perl-libnet perl-libwww-perl perl-libxml-enno perl-libxml-perl perl-suidperl pidentd pine pinfo pkgconfig popt portmap printconf printconf-gui procmail procps psgml psmisc pspell pwdb pygnome pygnome-libglade pygtk pygtk-libglade python python-devel python-docs qt qt-designer qt-devel radvd raidtools rdate readline readline-devel redhat-config-network redhat-config-users redhat-release reiserfs-utils rep-gtk rep-gtk-gnome rep-gtk-libglade rhn_register rhn_register-gnome rmt rpm rpm-build rpm-devel rpm-python rpmfind samba-client samba-common sane-backends sane-backends-devel sane-frontends sawfish screen scrollkeeper sed semi sendmail sendmail-cf sendmail-devel sendmail-doc serviceconf setserial setup sgml-common sh-utils shapecfg sharutils skkdic skkinput slang slang-devel smpeg sndconfig sox specspo stat strace sudo swig switchdesk switchdesk-gnome switchdesk-kde sysklogd sysstat tWnn taipeifonts tcl tcpdump tetex tetex-afm tetex-dvilj tetex-dvips tetex-fonts tetex-latex tetex-xdvi texinfo textutils time timeconfig timidity++ tix tk tkinter tmpwatch traceroute tree ttfonts ttfonts-ja ttfonts-ko ttfonts-zh_CN ttfonts-zh_TW ucd-snmp ucd-snmp-utils units unix2dos up2date up2date-gnome urw-fonts usbview usermode util-linux vixie-cron vnc vnc-server w3c-libwww wget which whois wine wl words xawtv xchat xcin xdelta xemacs xemacs-el xemacs-info xinitrc xmms xmms-gnome xpdf xsane yp-tools ypbind ypserv zip
The following packages will be REPLACED:
Mesa (by XFree86-libs) Mesa-devel (by XFree86-devel) XFree86-KOI8-R (by fonts-KOI8-R) XFree86-KOI8-R-75dpi-fonts (by fonts-KOI8-R-75dpi) XFree86-jpfonts (by fonts-ja) docbook-dtd30-sgml (by docbook-dtds) docbook-dtd31-sgml (by docbook-dtds) docbook-dtd40-sgml (by docbook-dtds) docbook-dtd41-sgml (by docbook-dtds) emacs-X11 (by emacs) emacs-nox (by emacs) im (by mew-common) kdegraphics (by libkscan) kdelibs-sound (by kdelibs, arts) kdelibs-sound-devel (by arts-devel) kdemultimedia (by noatun, kdemultimedia-libs, kdemultimedia-arts) kdenetwork (by lisa) kdesdk (by kdesdk-kspy) kdeutils (by ktimer) lclint (by splint) links (by elinks) sgml-tools (by linuxdoc-tools) vorbis (by vorbis-tools)
The following packages will be REMOVED:
opera
The following NEW packages will be installed:
Distutils Glide3 XFree86-base-fonts XFree86-font-utils arts-devel atk cdparanoia-libs cups-libs db3x docbook-dtds elinks fonts-KOI8-R fonts-KOI8-R-75dpi fonts-ja glib2 gnome-mime-data gtk2 hesiod hwdata intltool kdemultimedia-arts kdemultimedia-libs kdesdk-kspy ktimer libgal19 libglade2 libid3tag libkscan libmad libusb libvorbis10rc3 linuxdoc-tools lisa mew-common noatun openmotif pango postgresql-libs pygtk2 pygtk2-libglade python-clap python2 qt2 splint usbutils usermode-gtk vorbis-tools wl-common xml-common
560 packages upgraded, 49 newly installed, 23 replaced, 1 removed and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 711MB of archives.
After unpacking 92.2MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

OK, that's just silly. Wonder how long this will take to run...