Is dpkg unique to debian?

[André Bell <debian2@one-click.com>]

I just bought QUE's "Special Edition Using Linux" and there is no mention
of dpkg in its index or table of contents.  Bummer...

I've typed 'dpkg --help' and still don't understand what I need to input so
that apache installs.

I've installed the admin package by running boot.bat and following the
prompts and now would like to install apache and a few other web server
packages.  Unfortunately when signed in as root I get errors when I type
"dpkg --install apache" and "dpkg apache" and errors with "dpkg -apache".  

I'm obviously doing something wrong. Any ideas what I need to type to
install apache?  Deslect is supposed to be more user friendly but it seems
deselect requires more effort to get to the item I want installed. 

Thanks.

Andre'
p.s. Oh, the error says 'Cannot access archive: No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing'