Re: Aptitude wants to remove OpenOffice.org

Hi Bob,

Thank you for your very detailed and convincing explanation. I'll remove the
.rpm OOo stuff and install the backports from now on.


Still two question remains in my mind. First: What good is Alien for?
The Debian Reference says:

"6.4.12 Convert or install an alien binary package

Alien enables the conversion of binary packages provided in Red Hat
rpm,Stampede slp, Slackware
tgz, and Solaris pkg file formats into a Debian deb package. If you want to
use a package from another Linux distribution than the one you have
installed on your system, you can use alien to convert it to your preferred
package format and install it, alien also supports LSB packages."

(http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch-package.en.html)
How could I have known the danger of using Alien?


Second: What to do if no debian package exists at all? Eg: suppose Adobe
Acrobat would only be available as an .rpm package (and not as a tarball
like now). What should I do in such a case?

Greetings, Manon.

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