Hi everyone, I've used debian and debian-based distros for some time, I decided to try fedora,
I've come across several pieces of software that are available only as deb, is there something I can do to install those that can't be built from source?
Also is there some kind of guide to transition from debian to fedora,
or some site that explains the key differences?
Other than the package management, there aren't any massive differences to my knowledge.
Both use systemd, bot use a wacky fork of ffmpeg, both use grub.
Just find a fedora repo with more packages if you need them.
What software is only available as .deb with no source?
What pieces of software?
I'm not asking about a particular piece of software, as a matter of fact all the ones I've found as .deb only have source available, however I'd like to know what to do when I try to download some closed source software.
Most closed source linux software tends to have a .rpm because there usually made with CentOS/RHEL in mind. So they should in theory work.
Otherwise most other things are in Official, rpmfusion, standalone rpm, or copr.
Somewhat related question (I guess that's where @ipushpeople is getting at). Assuming there is no RPM and no source available, is there a way of installing a .deb package directly? Either through the package manager, or through the terminal, or both?
Most cases you might find someone has unpacked the deb and made an rpm somewhere.
You can use alien to convert between package formats with varying results.
Your best bet though is to get something mean to run on the system.
in my experience, you'll find closed source software distributed in .rpm and .run/.sh far more often than you will in .deb. People Tend to build against RHEL for software they expect people to pay for or expect commercial support.
There will always be edge cases, sure, but for the few you find, there's always community ports and tools like
alien is usually a good bet
Steam is one piece of software with no source and only a .deb, but luckily rpmfusion-nonfree has a repackaged version for Fedora.
thanks
I guess that's because steamOS is basically debian? And they only officially support Ubuntu too, so.. yeah.
Funny thing is I less it changed recently and they fixed it. Steam on fedora ran better than on Ubuntu .