I know there are ways to install software outside of aptitude on debian/ubuntu, (add repo, or build, or download binary, or possibly flatpak/snap/etc).
But being able to download *.deb files was one of the nicest aspect of using a debian based distros and now I’m seeing more and more projects include all distros except deb files.
Someone correct me but I vaguely recall that distributing debs is no longer recommended by debian itself?
- Am I wrong, and have I only co-incidentally stumbled on projects that don’t distribute debs?
- I am right and this seems like a mis-step, removing one of the most beginner friendly features that helped propagate debian based distros?
Flamesuit on.
Man, this became so bad in the last five years or so.
Just bought a digital drawing tablet from a manufacturer who claim their products have Linux support. Plugged it in and went to their download lage. Of course, there would not be a link to their GitHub project and instead I got a .deb and a .rpm, which is totally useless to me because my system is neither Debian/Ubuntu nor even glibc.
rpm2targz should solve the first half of that problem (debs can be unpacked without their package manager too, but I forget the method). As for the glibc part, crossing your fingers and hoping it will work with musl or whatever anyway seems like the most useful course of action, alas.
They’re (usually) packaged with the slightly unusual
arformat -ar x yourpackage.debshould give you the underlyingtarfiles that would be installed, and thentar xf yourpackage.tar. Most archive managers will let you open them up like any other archive though - Gnome’s certainly does - if that’s easier for you.