Apt is a great tool, but on rpm based systems (apt4rpm) it's too slow, the fastest and most powerfull tool I've know for this systems is y2pmsh that may only be found on SuSE, besides, YaST installer is easier for newbies and is as powerfull as apt, unless it's slower. I personally prefer y2pmsh over apt cause of apt is too automatized for my likes, tgz too complicate, and haven't use emerge (for Gentoo) y2pmsh gives you more control even than apt on Debian.