I have a question. When you have a package only available in another format (like RPM), is it 'better' to use rpm to install it or to use alien to convert the package and then install it? What are the benefits disadvantages of each?
In my particular problem, I was trying to install the official ATI drivers for my graphics card and things didn't go very well. First I used alien to make a .deb package, then did dpkg -i filename.deb and things seemed to be working fine, but it screwed up and startx wouldn't work so I had to reload my old XF86Config-4 file. But synaptic shows the package as uninstalled, but its there under "Converted RPM from alien". On a side note anyone with experience getting ATI drivers installed successfully on my system would be welcome to share their knowledge.