And possible program actions that can be done with the file: like open rpm file, edit rpm file, convert rpm file, view rpm file, play rpm file etc. (if exist software for corresponding action in File-Extensions.org's database). RPM originally stands for Red Hat Package Manager.Nnow, RPM is a package management system. The name RPM variously refers to the.rpm file format, files in this format, software packaged in such files, and the package manager itself.
Building packages is a task that every system administrator will end up doing. Most of the time this is not a very interesting task but someone has to do it, right? Normally you will end up modifying and tweaking based on your own needs an existing package that was built by the maintainers of the Linux distribution that you are using. In time you might even become familiar with the packaging system you are using (rpm, deb, etc.) and you will be able to write a spec file and start from scratch and build a new package if you need to. Still, this process is complicated and requires a lot of work.
Luckily, Jordan Sissel has built a tool called FPM (Effing Package Management), exactly for this: to ease the pain of building new packages; packages that you will use for your own infrastructure and you want them customized based on your own needs; and you don’t care about upstream rules and standards and other limitations when building such packages. This can be very useful for people deploying their own applications as rpms (or debs) and can simplify a lot of the process of building those packages.
FPM can be easily installed on your build system using rubygems:
Once installed you can use fpm to build packages (targets):
- deb
- rpm
- solaris
from any of the following sources:
- directory (of compiled source of some application)
- gem
- python eggs
- rpm
- node npm packages
Use the command line help (fpm —help) or the wiki to see full details on how to use it. I’ll show some simple examples on how to build some packages from various input sources that I’ve found useful myself.
1. Package a directory – output of a ‘make install’ command
This is how you would usually package an application that you would install with:./configure; make; make installFor example, here is how you can create an rpm of the latest version of memcached:
so far everything looks like a normal manual installation (that would be followed by make install). Still we will now install it in a separate folder so we can capture the output:
and finally using fpm to create the rpm package:
where -s is the input source type (directory), -t is the type of package (rpm), -n in the name of the package and -v is the version; -C is the directory where fpm will look for the files.Note: you might need to install various libraries to build your package; for ex. in this case I had to install libevent-dev.
If you are packaging your own application you can do this just by pointing to your build folder and set the version of the app. Here is an example for an deb package:
There are various other parameters that you can use but basically this is how simple it is to build a package from a directory.Here is an example on how to define some dependencies on the package you are building (using -d; repeat it as many times as needed):
2. Ruby gems or python egg – converted to packages
You can create a deb or rpm from a gem very simple with fpm:
this will download the gem and create a package named rubygem-<gem_name>For example:
will create a debian package for fpm: rubygem-fpm_0.3.7_all.deb
You can inspect it with dpkg —info and you can notice that in this case it will fill nicely all the fields with the maintainer, and dependencies on various other gems. Very cool.
If you use python and want to package various python eggs this will work exactly the same and you will use -s python (it will download the python packages with easy_install first).
Overall FPM is a great tool and can help you simplify the way you are building your own packages. Check it out and let me know what you think and if you found it useful. And if you found this useful don’t forget to thank Jordan for his great work on this awesome tool.
The inbuilt codec playback support in GNU Linux is limited, many times we need to install codecs just for viewing a single video of a particular format as the video simply won’t play . If you have many videos of different format then installing codecs for all of them becomes a tedious task. Also sometimes, you may need to transfer a video to your handheld device or mobile phone, that too becomes a problem if the codecs mismatch. There’s a simple solution to the aforesaid problems though, why not simply convert them to a particular format which is supported by Operating system/device by using Video converters ? And these Top 7 free video converters for Linux mentioned below will help you on how to convert videos in Linux the easy way –
App # 1 – VLC
Using VLC’s video conversion
Not to get confused, but yes the very powerful VLC media player by VideoLAN, also doubles up as an audio/video converter for Linux. The reason why we placed VLC at the top is its easy availability for almost any GNU Linux distribution, hence installing VLC won’t be a big hiccup for users. Also, many distros such as Linux Mint come with VLC preinstalled anyway, with all the codecs and offcourse it doubles up as a Media player too . The procedure to convert videos using VLC too is pretty easy and is as follows –
- Go to Media — > Convert/Save — > Now, in the file tab add your source video/audio file which you intend to convert.
- After Adding your file, click on the small “down arrow” mark on the Convert/Save button and Select “Convert”.
- Now,specify the conversion format in the “Profile” drop down as shown in the alongside image, Specify the destination file to save the convert file.
- Click on “Start”, Your video/audio conversion will be started! and after conversion the converted file will be available in the destination source.
App # 2 – HandBrake
Though, at the time of writing this post Handbrake was available only for Ubuntu, but its rapid development promises its upgrade for other linux distributions too. HandBrake is a feature reach Video converter with exclusive feature of preview window, which can help you to preview videos before converting in addition to supporting various formats and codecs for video conversion.
App # 3 – WinFF for Linux
WinFF
Not to get confused by its name WinFF is actively developed for and works in Linux too!, its basically a front-end for ffmpeg, and is very powerful. WinFF allows easy conversions from / to desired video formats in Linux. Although, readymade download packages aren’t yet available but you can easily install them from repository depending upon your GNU Linux distribution as mentioned below –
App # 4 – FF Multi Converter for Linux
Fpm Convert To Cfm Calculator
True to its name FF Multi Converter is a multipurpose converter which can convert audio, video as well as images in Linux. It can convert from / to between all popular encoding formats and uses ffmpeg for audio/video files, unoconv for document files and ImageMagick for image file conversions. The Front-end is what which makes is standout as it removes the need to remember command line commands for conversions using ffmpeg etc.
App # 5 – Transmaggedon for Linux
Transmageddon is a video converter/ transcoder app for Linux and Unix systems built using GStreamer. It supports many formats as its input and can generate a very large host of output files depending upon the User’s choice. Transmaggedon is available in RPM package too which makes it an ideal video converter for Fedora.
Click here to download Transmaggedon tar package.
Click here to download Transmaggedon RPM package.
App # 6 – Format Junkie for Linux
Though, there has been only a single version of Format Junkie that too in 2012, but its user base remains intact. All because of its hasslefree user interface, and speedy conversions. Expect Format Junkie to perform smooth conversion between video formats released prior to 2012, however it may struggle to perform conversions with newer codecs.
App # 7 – DamnVid for Linux
DamnVid UI for Linux
DamnVid ceases to impress us, although its our favorite when it comes to windows but its incompatibility with newer linux versions pushes it upto No.7 in this list of video converters. There’s no looking for other solutions/app for video conversion even for professional users, if you get DamnVid running. Although, the default packages of DamnVid Linux won’t work anymore on newer Linux kernels, but you can always use Wine! to run the windows version of DamnVid on your Linux.
And , if you don’t wish to install wine for a single app, here’s a Portable compact version of DamnVid for you which works on newer Linux distros too! –
Click here to download Portable DamnVid for Linux.
Fpm Convert To M/s
So, these were some of the Best Free Video converters available for Ubuntu/Fedora/Arch and other distributions of Linux, if you know of any other good one or incase you encounter any problems feel free to drop a comment :).