The Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) is a toolset used to build and manage software packages on UNIX systems. Distributed with the Red Hat Linux distribution and its derivatives (CentOS is 100% compatible rebuild of the Rehat Enterprise Linux), RPM also works on any UNIX as it is open source. However, finding RPM packages for other forms of UNIX, such as Solaris or IRIX, may prove difficult.

Package management is rather simple in its principles, though it can be tricky in its implementations. Briefly, it means the managed installation of software, managing installed software, and the removal of software packages from a system in a simplified manner. RPM arose out of the needs to do this effectively, and no other meaningful solution was available.

RPM uses a proprietary file format, unlike some other UNIX software package managers. This can be problematic if you find yourself needing to extract one component from the package and you don’t have the RPM utility handy. Luckily a tool like Alien exists to convert from RPM to other formats. It can be possible, through tools like Alien, to get to a file format you can manage using, say, tar or ar.
The naming scheme of RPM files is itself a standardized convention.

RPMs have the format (name)-(version)-(build).(platform).rpm. For example, the name cat-2.4-7.i386.rpm would mean an RPM for the utility “cat” version 2.4, build 7 for the x86. When the platform name is replaced by “src”, it’s a source RPM.