I'll answer my own question about the +/- of RPM and DEBs...
http://kitenet.net/~joey/pkg-comp/
Also throws .tgz and .slp in as well. I do see a couple of nice things
about RPM, such as triggers and verification programs built in to the
packages. Other than that, I don't think it matters much when you are only
taking features into account. APT and the Debian packaging system on the
back-end is the bread and butter here.
Blake Barnett
Sr. Unix Administrator
DevelopOnline