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Is there any way to synchronize software packages between different Linux distributions? There are several software packages that I need to synchronize between a Linux Mint installation and an Ubuntu installation. Ubuntu already provides a software synchronization service, but it would be even better if software packages could be synchronized between multiple Linux distributions. In order to do this, I would need to find a package installation method that would work on all Linux distributions, and periodically download a list of packages from a central server.

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Whenever I install a new Linux distribution, I always end up installing a lot of packages manually. It would be better if I could synchronize a list of packages between several Linux distributions. – Anderson Green Jan 2 at 21:25
For those two specific distributions, it might be easier than say Ubuntu and Fedora... Ubuntu and Mint use the same package manager and Mint is based on Ubuntu. Is it one way (like the other comment seem to indicate) or a continuous two-way syncronization? – Gert van den Berg Jan 2 at 21:29
@GertvandenBerg I think continuous two-way synchronization would be the best option. It would be great if it were possible to synchronize packages between multiple Linux distributions (perhaps more than two). :) – Anderson Green Jan 2 at 21:32
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If I were trying to do continuous two-way synchronization, I'd need to write a script that would periodically check for updates on some kind of central server, and install newly added packages whenever they were found. – Anderson Green Jan 2 at 21:36
I would only want to synchronize software packages that I'd manually added to the list - synchronizing all software packages between all distributions wouldn't be necessary. – Anderson Green Jan 2 at 21:51
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Different distributions package up software differently (that makes them different, in the first place...). So there can't be a real 1 to 1 mapping of packages, more so that the versions won't agree. And doing some kind of "accurate fuzzy matching" is a titanic job. Resign yourself to doing it by hand, automating that will be much more work.

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