RPM on Ubuntu

Package managment can be a slight hassle if you are trying out many different types of Linux distributions with various package management systems. Deb packages (in Debian based systems) and Rpm packages (in Red Hat based systems) are the most popular. Still there is a way to install an rpm file in Ubuntu. Read on to find out more.

Many application files are available as both as deb packges as well as in .rpm format s but sometimes we may find that the aplication that we need to install is in amother format than what we actually need. So the only plausible way to install it would be to convert one package format to another.

The following procedure will explain about the conversion process:

Before starting the conversion we need to install  ALIEN which helps us to do the conversion.

FYI Alien is a program that converts the rpm, dpkg, stampede slp, and slackware tgz file formats into each other. If you want to use a package from another distribution than the one you have installed on your system, you can use alien to convert it to your preferred package format and install it.

1.Right click on the desktop and click on open terminal and execute the following command

sudo apt-get install alien

2.Now when we execute the above command it will prompt for the password so enter the password that is used for linux login.

3.Next it will display as shown in the screen below and at the end of the message it will ask you for yes(y) or no(n) then give y and hit enter.

4.Installation our last step:

5.First lets us do the conversion of .rpm to .deb :-

(Here the explanation is based upon the .rpm file of google voice and videochat plugin which is taken as our example)

1. Copy the downloaded .rpm file to desktop.

2. Right click on the desktop and open the terminal.

3. Execute the following command :-

sudo alien -k --scripts filename.rpm 

4. .deb file will be generated on the desktop and we can use it for installation

Now we will proceed with the conversion of .deb to .rpm:-

1.Copy the downloaded .deb file to desktop

2.Right click on the desktop and open the terminal

3.Execute the following command :-

sudo alien -r filename.deb

4. .rpm file will be generated on the desktop and we can use it for installation