I am a big fan of mind-mapping software and, for years, I’ve been using Freemind.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people are moving towards XMind which, for some peculiar reason, is only available as a Debian (.deb) package. This is a bit problematic as I run Fedora and CentOS which are both based on RPM (Redhat Package Manager). Here is how I managed to convert the .deb package into an .rpm which can then be easily installed with a yum localinstall:
(1) Download the Debian package
(2) Create the RPM
alien -r --scripts package.deb
This command (alien) converts the Debian package into an RPM and makes sure that any scripts (pre- and post- installation) will run when the RPM file is installed. See this for more info.
(3) The issue is that the RPM will fail to install as there is a conflict with three directories: /, /usr/bin and /usr/lib. The solution is to install rpmrebuild and use it as follows:
rpmrebuild -pe xmind.rpm
Remove all lines for /, /usr/bin and /usr/lib in the %files section and you should then get an RPM. See this for more info.
Or one just downloads the portable package of XMind from xmind webpage, extracts it, and executes the XMind file (chmod +x XMind). Works fine and no need to convert the .deb package.
You are right. This is another great way to run XMind. Personally, I prefer the RPM route both for the educational aspect (how do I create an RPM from a DEB) and for ease of update / removals later.