Distributing binary applications across linux distros

Question

I\'ve written an application which as of yet is not open source and I\'d like to distribute the executable across various linux distros. What\'s the best way to do this, I\'ve l

Answer 1

RPM and DEB packages are the two primary mechanisms for distributing binary packages in Linux. RPM is used by RedHat and its derivatives (Fedora, CentOS), while DEB is used in Debian and Ubuntu.

The .rpm and .deb files themselves are generally "dumb" archives, and are installed to the correct locations in the filesystem by pre-installed helper applications. You don't have to worry about writing scripts to install files, unless it's a very complicated application which needs special per-system configuration.

The usual patterns I see for distributing binaries are:

• Release a compessed tarball (.tar.gz or .tar.bz2), and let distribution packagers worry about the details. This works well for popular applications, but if it's newly released, nobody will care enough about your application to package it.
• Release as a tarball, plus RPM and/or DEB packages (depending on customer needs). Customers with a supported distribution may install the pre-made package. Anybody who's using an unusual distribution is probably happy to install from a tarball anyway.