Hello there, folks

I'm asking myself a question, and that's a question SO naive, that I actually never really thought thoroughly about it... until today when I'd need to know, and can't figure it out ^^

Simply said : what happens if you try to install an RPM that's not natively created for your distro ? I know that not all distros share the same components/system paths, or sometimes use different libs or components, so what's fit for one might not be fit for the other..
1/ Will you risk to wreak havoc in your system ?
2/ Will everything work fine with the RPM's contents being adapted to your distro ?
3/ Will there be a safety check before installation, causing you to be told that the RPM cannot be installed ?

I have an RPM for Debian/Ubuntu, while my system's Mandriva 2006. No other RPMs are available, and compiling from source would be a nightmare in the present case.
Considering that option 1/ (causing mayhem) is among the possibilities, I'd rather avoid taking the risk of testing ;-)

Thanks if you can enlighten me

Debian and Ubuntu don't use rpms, they use debs. You can convert a deb to an rpm using alien and it may or may not work on an rpm based system. Installing rpms from a different distro is a bit hit and miss because sometimes they will work just fine and other times they won't. With the more important system packages, you can actually break your system if you install rpms from another distro. Sometimes rebuilding source rpms helps because you can customise them for your distro.

1.No, but do remove it if it doesn't work.
2.Not likely. You can always remove it if doesn't work.
3.If all its listed dependencies are installed, it will install, even if it doesn't work.

PS: ...an RPM for a Debian system? Do you mind linking it?
If they have an SRPM(.src.rpm) use that one.

Oh my, sorry for the mistake ! It's true that debian RPMs would be funny.
I was thinking of Suse RPMs as a matter of fact, but I had just stumbled a minute ago on frostwire's homepage with the frustrating discovery they had .deb but not .rpm packages.

Thanks for the information, guys !

In other words, when you have an RPM that's not entirely made for your distro, it's "use at your own risk, and only if it's not a huge system app". Better know that than have doubts ^^

If it has an SRPM(.src.rpm) you should normally be able to install it like this:

# rpmbuild --rebuild package_name.src.rpm
# rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/package_name.i386.rpm

For frostwire:

Get the linux ZIP file:
http://www.frostwire.com/

$su

#unzip -u FrostWire-4.10.9-2-AnyOS.zip -d /opt/

#chown -R root:root /opt/FrostWire

#su -

#chmod +x /opt/FrostWire/runFrost.sh

#exit

$/opt/FrostWire/runFrost.sh