Installing packages =================== Please do not use rpm directly to install packages. Install the alien package and use the alien command to convert/install a rpm package using dpkg. Use of rpm to install packages is verbosely complaining on Debian systems (you can disable these warnings by --force-debian). Fixing database after upgrade ============================= If you rpm database is non empty, you might face problems after upgrading because different libdb version is being used. To recover content of old database use following steps: 1. Install corresponding db*-util package. At time writing it is db4.8-util (the version should match libdb version which rpm uses). sudo apt-get install db4.8-util 2. Go to the directory with your rpm database: cd ~/.rpmdb 3. Recover the database using db*_recover. db4.8_recover ./ 4. Rebuild rpm database. rpm --dbpath `pwd` --rebuilddb 5. Verify that the database is correct. rpm --dbpath `pwd` -qa Source packages location ======================== If you are using rpm to build rpm packages, or unpack source rpms, note that on Debian systems, rpm uses /usr/src/rpm/, instead of /usr/src/redhat/ or /usr/src/packages/.