PackageKit is DBUS packaging abstraction layer that makes use of a cross-distro, cross-architecture API to manage your system’s packages. In other words, it is a way for updating and administering software on a GNU/Linux system without worrying about the distro or underlying package management system.

Having gone from concept to release in inly 6 weeks of intensive collaborative work, version 0.1.0 already sports backends for conary, yum, apt, box, and alpm as well as comprehensive documentation and some translations (Vladimir Melo and I managed to get the Brazilian Portuguese translation done just in time!).

More information about this release can be found here, including information on where to get tarballs and RPMs. Want to help out with the translations? Feel like adding a backend for your distro? Just come by #PackageKit on Freenode and join our mailing list.

As always, Foresight users can get this goodness by running sudo conary updateall. Then kiss the command line goodbye and use the Add/Remove Software entry in the System -> Administration menu.

With the upcoming FOSSCamp, I’d love to talk to some of the Ubuntu guys (yeah Jorge Castro, I’m talking to you!) about getting PackageKit into Ubuntu 8.04.

Speaking of Ubuntu, I’ll be in Boston on Oct. 26-28 and would love to meet and hangout with the Brazilian and Portuguese [add your country here] guys going to UDS. What do you say guys?