The first version of Synaptic was released in 2003. Even before then you had apt and yum so even though it wasn’t a gui the process was still straightforward. “yum search movie maker” “yum install movie-maker”
By 2003 we were well past the point of rpm hell at long as you had a solid Internet connection and weren’t trying to install a new package on a machine that had not been updated in two years and had no Internet access.
