I still have flashbacks from circa 2000-2002 being in "rpm hell" and trying to install a single package on my system, only to find out it needs libutemptr-3.0.1

I still have flashbacks from circa 2000-2002 being in "rpm hell" and trying to install a single package on my system, only to find out it needs libutemptr-3.0.1.rpm, where as my yahoo searches only found a download for libutemptr-3.0.2a.rpm. I try downloading that anyway, wait 20m on my dailup connection, only to find that libutemptr needs libgdkpixbuf-7-9.01.rpm. 50% of the time, one of these dependencies would clash with whatever was already on my system and refuse to install. 49% of the time, it wouldn't be the right version so it wouldn't work anyway. and 1% of the time I could eventually make it work if I just extracted the content and changed my LD_LIBRARY_PATH to satisfy the dependencies manually. eliding the very purpose of rpm. rpm hell was the Dark Ages of FOSS, and I'm so glad that the community has resolved that problem. However, the bitter taste still lingers and for this reason I will never take rpm files seriously again.