Alien (software)

Alien is a computer program that converts between different Linux package formats, created by Joey Hess and presently maintained by Kyle Barry.

Alien supports conversion between Linux Standard Base (LSB), LSB-compliant .rpm packages,.deb, Stampede (.slp), Solaris (.pkg) and Slackware (.tgz, .txz, .tbz, .tlz) packages. It is also capable of automatically installing the generated packages, and can try to convert the installation scripts included in the archive as well. The latter feature should be used with caution since Linux distributions may vary significantly from one another, and using install scripts automatically converted from an Alien format may break the system.

A sample usage of Alien:

# alien --to-rpm --scripts ./mypkg.deb

This will convert mypkg.deb to mypkg.rpm with the preinst, postinst, prerm and postrm scripts from the Debian package (deb) into the RPM package.

Terminal Commands for Alien

sudo alien (filename).rpm - Rpm to Deb

sudo alien -k (filename).tar.gz - Tar.gz - Deb

sudo alien -d (filename).tar.bz2 - Tar.bz2 - Deb

sudo alien --to-deb ~/(filename).tgz - Tgz - Deb

Unknown sudo alien -r (filename).deb