Converting RPM packages to DEB packages for Ubuntu

To convert .rpm package file to a .deb, you can use the alien command: alien file.rpm after installing alien using the command:

sudo apt install alien

The main challenge i faced was that my RPM package was a 32bit package and I have a 64bit Ubuntu system. To get around this, we you can use fakeroot command like this:

fakeroot alien --target=amd64 file.rpm

This will generate a 64bit DEB file you can install with the comand sudo dpkg -i file.deb

Notice that if the package is a hardware driver, the resulting .deb will install in the system, but won’t work. 32-bit drivers cannot work in a 64-bit kernel and vice-versa.