tarballs and rpm's

[thomas fisher]

On Saturday 19 January 2008 13:21:21 Derek Broughton wrote:
> John B. Pace wrote:
> > I'm looking for assistance to dealing with tarballs and rpm's. I haven't
> > been around linux in some 10 years and at 54 my memory is quite fuzzy.
> > Actually the last time around I had a lot of difficulties until I had to
> > give up. Not this time. I've got a lot figured out, but have more, of
> > course--like those tar.gz and rpm files. How does one install them?
>
> Generally, one doesn't.  You try to get .deb packages.  If you _have_ to
> install an rpm, you should use "alien" to convert it to a deb package
> first.  If it's a tarball, you just untar it, and do "./configure; make;
> sudo make install" in the unpacked directory.  Of course, it fails if you
> don't have all your dependencies installed...  primarily you will need to
> install the "build-essentials" package.
> --
> derek

  Does  "alien" that is part of the ubuntu release perform a thorough check 
that the dependencies of the .rpm are met and ensure that the ubuntu packages 
are not compromised?

Tom