| |
|
deb is the extension of the Debian software package format and the most often used name for such binary packages. Like the term Debian, it's named after Debra Murdock, wife of Debian's founder Ian Murdock.
Debian packages are standard Unix ar archives that include two gzipped tar archives: one that holds the control information and another that contains the data.
The canonical program for handling these packages is dpkg, most commonly via apt.
deb packages can reasonably easily be converted into other packages using Alien.