Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install alien on CentOS 8.
What is alien
Alien is a program that converts between the rpm, dpkg, stampede slp, and Slackware tgz file formats. If you want to use a package from another distribution than the one you have installed on your system, you can use alien to convert it to your preferred package format and install it.
We can use yum or dnf to install alien on CentOS 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install alien.
Install alien on CentOS 8 Using dnf
Update yum database with dnf using the following command.
sudo dnf makecache --refresh
The output should look something like this:
CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream 43 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS 65 kB/s | 3.9 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease 43 kB/s | 3.0 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras 23 kB/s | 1.5 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack 40 kB/s | 3.0 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability 36 kB/s | 3.9 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus 24 kB/s | 1.5 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools 50 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64 13 kB/s | 9.2 kB 00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64 24 kB/s | 8.5 kB 00:00
Metadata cache created.
After updating yum database, We can install alien using dnf by running the following command:
sudo dnf -y install alien
Install alien on CentOS 8 Using yum
Update yum database with yum using the following command.
sudo yum makecache --refresh
The output should look something like this:
CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream 43 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS 65 kB/s | 3.9 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease 43 kB/s | 3.0 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras 23 kB/s | 1.5 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack 40 kB/s | 3.0 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability 36 kB/s | 3.9 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus 24 kB/s | 1.5 kB 00:00
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools 50 kB/s | 4.3 kB 00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64 13 kB/s | 9.2 kB 00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64 24 kB/s | 8.5 kB 00:00
Metadata cache created.
After updating yum database, We can install alien using yum by running the following command:
sudo yum -y install alien
How To Uninstall alien on CentOS 8
To uninstall only the alien package we can use the following command:
sudo dnf remove alien
alien Package Contents on CentOS 8
/usr/bin/alien
/usr/share/doc/alien
/usr/share/doc/alien/README
/usr/share/doc/alien/changelog
/usr/share/licenses/alien
/usr/share/licenses/alien/GPL
/usr/share/man/man1/alien.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man3/Alien::Package.3pm.gz
/usr/share/man/man3/Alien::Package::Deb.3pm.gz
/usr/share/man/man3/Alien::Package::Lsb.3pm.gz
/usr/share/man/man3/Alien::Package::Pkg.3pm.gz
/usr/share/man/man3/Alien::Package::Rpm.3pm.gz
/usr/share/man/man3/Alien::Package::Slp.3pm.gz
/usr/share/man/man3/Alien::Package::Tgz.3pm.gz
/usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Alien
/usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Alien/Package
/usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Alien/Package.pm
/usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Alien/Package/Deb.pm
/usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Alien/Package/Lsb.pm
/usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Alien/Package/Pkg.pm
/usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Alien/Package/Rpm.pm
/usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Alien/Package/Slp.pm
/usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Alien/Package/Tgz.pm
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install alien on CentOS 8 using yum and dnf.
