Install RPM packages on Ubuntu

The Ubuntu repositories contain thousands of deb packages which can be installed from the Ubuntu Software Center or by using the apt command line utility. Deb is the installation package format used by all Debian based distributions including Ubuntu. Some packages are not available in the standard Ubuntu repositories but it can be easily installed by enabling the appropriate source.

In most cases when the software vendor does not provide a repository they will have a download page from where you can download and install the deb package or download and compile the software from sources.

Although not so often, some software may be distributed only as an RPM package. RPM is a package format used by Red Hat and its derivatives such as CentOS. Luckily, there is a tool called alien that allows us to install an RPM file on Ubuntu or to convert an RPM package file into a Debian package file.

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