Compatibility question Ubuntu/Redhat software

[Bob Nielsen]

On Tue, 2005-04-26 at 13:59 -0400, blackmon4627 at bellsouth.net wrote:
> I know very little about compiling etc. If I find a piece of software, such as Samba, already compiled for Red Hat, will that work usually? Sorry for all the questions. I may have used Windows and DOS based computers for years but Linux is pretty new to me

If you need samba, you should install the Ubuntu version, using
synaptic, apt-get or (??).  Sometimes software is only available in
a .rpm package and to install that you should first install the "alien"
package, which can be used to convert the Red Hat, etc., .rpm packages
to .deb packages for a Debian-type installation.  These can then be
installed using "dpkg -i <packagename>.deb"  This will work *most* of
the time, although you may get a message about missing dependencies.
Hopefully suitable packages to meet the dependencies are available from
the Ubuntu repository.

If the software is only available in source, then you will need to
compile it, of course.