newbie question about kynaptic

[Francis G]

> Can I run the "kynaptic" GUI from a command line? I mean, is this a GUI for
> RPM or something?

Welcome to Ubuntu!

Close. Kynaptic -- like Synaptic -- is a GUI front-end for *apt* -- a powerful 
package management system, mainly used on Debian-based distributions (such as 
Ubuntu), but also used in others, such as Fedora. However, where the Fedora 
repositories use RPMs, Debian-based systems use Debian packages (*.deb). They 
are similar in many ways, but also slightly different. 

So, the backend of Kynaptic is apt -- you can use it in the same way that you 
do on Fedora, pretty much. apt-get install <packagename> will download and 
install the .deb. For more information, see the man page or check out Google.

Regards,
Francis Giannaros.