Convert RPM to DEB or DEB to RPM

Sometimes you need a package but only a package for another distribution is available. What can you do? This article explains converting RPM to DEB and DEB to RPM: converting a Red Hat-family package (.rpm) to a Debian/Ubuntu-family package (.deb), or vice versa. You need a program called alien. For RPM-family distributions such as CentOS, Red Hat, SUSE, or Fedora, download alien-8.77-1.src.rpm. I built this as a .src.rpm so you can rebuild it for your own distribution. Rebuild the RPM with:

[root@tum ~]# rpmbuild --rebuild alien-8.77-1.src.rpm

This produces an RPM file. Install it with the rpm command below:

[root@tum ~]# rpm -ihv alien-8.77-1.rpm

For Ubuntu, use:

[root@tum ~]# sudo apt-get install alien

Usage Example conversion from .rpm to .deb:

[root@tum ~]# alien -d file.rpm file.deb

Example conversion from .deb to .rpm:

[root@tum ~]# alien -r file.deb. file.rpm