This article shows how you can convert .rpm packages to
.deb packages with a tool called alien so that you
can easily install them on Debian and Ubuntu systems. Sometimes this is quite
convenient as not all software projects release their software as Debian/Ubuntu
packages.
However, you should keep in mind what the alien man page
says:
"alien should
not be used to replace important system packages, like init, libc, or other
things that are essential for the functioning of your system. Many of these
packages are set up differently by the different distributions, and packages
from the different distributions cannot be used interchangeably. In general, if
you can't remove a package without breaking your system, don't try to replace
it with an alien version."
1
Preliminary Note
In this example I use a Debian Sarge system, and I will
show how to convert the mysql-zrm rpm package to a .deb file and install that
one. The procedure is the same for Ubuntu.
2 Alien
Installation
Alien is available in the normal Debian repositories, so
we can install it like this:
apt-get install alien
3 Converting
.rpm To .deb
Next we use any rpm file which you want to
convert, Here I am using VLC (vlc-1.1.13-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm)
To convert it into a .deb package, we simply run
alien vlc-1.1.13-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm
Afterwards, run
ls -l
You'll see that alien has created the file vlc-1.1.13-2.el6.rf.x86_64.deb.
You'll also notice that alien has counted up the version number, it's now 1.1.13-1 instead of 1.1.13-2. If you
want to keep the original version number, you must use the -k switch:
alien -k vlc-1.1.13-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm
will create the file vlc-1.1.13-1.el6.rf.x86_64.deb.
To install the new .deb file, we use dpkg -i:
dpkg -i vlc-1.1.13-1.el6.rf.x86_64.deb
If you want to save the dpkg -i step, you can have alien
install the package. The command
alien -i vlc-1.1.13-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm
would convert the original rpm package and immediately
install it.
You see, converting .rpm files to .deb files is very
easy. You can have a look at
man alien
to learn about what else you can do with alien.
