The Ubuntu / Debian systems has its own proprietary package management which is mainly handled by the tool dpkg. There is no direct way to install Red Hat .rpm packages on these systems. But there is a tool to convert .rpm packages to Debian .deb files: Alien.
Alien is a program that converts between the rpm, dpkg, stampede slp, and slackware tgz file formats. If you want to use a package from another 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.
 | Note Despite the large version number, alien is still (and will probably always be) rather experimental software. It has been used by many people for many years, but there are still many bugs and limitations. Alien should not be used to replace important system packages, like sysvinit, shared libraries, or other things that are essential for the functioning of your system. Many of these packages are set up differently by Debian and Red Hat, and packages from the different distributions cannot be used interchangably. In general, if you can't uninstall the package without breaking your system, don't try to replace it with an alien version. |
The conversion of the BEAM rpm installer package and the subsequent installation from the Debian package has been tested on Ubuntu 6.10.
Here is how to do it:
Install Alien on your system:
$sudo apt-get update
$sudo apt-get install alien
Convert the rpm file from .rpm to .deb:
$sudo alien -ck name-of-rpm-file.rpm
Finally, install the newly created Debian package:
$sudo dpkg -i name-of-deb-file.deb