Keryx: Portable, Cross-Platform Offline Package Manager For Ubuntu / Debian

Keryx is a portable, open source and cross-platform package manager for APT-based (Ubuntu, Debian) systems. It provides a graphical interface for gathering updates, packages, and dependencies for offline computers. It is similar to "Sushi, huh?", but easier to use and with a nice GUI.

Other than being very easy to use, there are three other reasons why I really like Keryx:

• You can edit it's sources, so you can use PPAs and other unofficial repositories (under Project > Edit Sources);
• When clicking on a package, it's dependencies are displayed, along with the direct download link for the package in question.
• On the second computer, you can see the packages for which there are updates available, before downloading them.

Keryx currently only works for Debian based Linux distros (but like I said, the packages can be downloaded from Windows or Mac OS X too), but there are plans for adding support for a number of other package management systems.

How to use Keryx

1. To get started, download Keryx and it's Ubuntu dependencies - you can find both of these archives at Keryx download page.

Then, extract the dependencies to a new folder and run this command to install them:

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

2. Then extract the Keryx downloaded archive, navigate to it's folder using the terminal, then navigate to the folder called "linux" and make the file keryx.py executable:

chmod +x keryx.py

Now run it either by typing "./keryx.py" in a terminal, or by double clicking keryx.py.

3. The next step is to select a new project (or simply click on "Open project") and select your Ubuntu version (or Debian):

And allow it to download the latest package list.


5. Run Keryx on the second computer to get the package updates and / or download new packages.

At this point, Keryx knows what packages are installed on your computer, etc. You can now take Keryx on an USB stick and run it on another computer which uses either Ubuntu / Debian or Windows and update the packages / download new packages on this second computer. If the second computer uses Ubuntu / Debian, repeat the steps above to run Keryx on this second computer. If it uses Windows, you will find a Windows executable in the keryx/win32 folder (where "keryx" is the folder where you extracted keryx at step 1).


When trying to download a new file for later installation, Keryx will also display all the dependencies required by this packages and their download URL:

6. I chose an Ubuntu Karmic 32 bit existing process (at step 3), so all the packages I've downloaded on the second computer are located in the /keryx/projects/karmic-32-bit-default/packages/ folder on the USB stick. If you opened another project or named your project differently, the packages should be in /keryx/projects/<your_project_name>/packages/.

Now that you know where the packages are located, you can install all of them using the following command in a terminal (firstly, use the terminal to navigate to the folder I was telling you above: cd /path/to/keryx/projects/karmic-32-bit-default/packages/):

sudo dpkg -i –force-depends *.deb

[application seen on Ubucentrum]