checkinstall installs the software in order to build the .deb, so it is sort of dangerous in that regard. It would not keep your home dir safe. I would recommen

checkinstall installs the software in order to build the .deb, so it is sort of dangerous in that regard. It would not keep your home dir safe. I would recommend running it in a virtual machine. Building .debs is not all that difficult, just sort of an archaic and not particularly well-documented process. fpm (Ruby Gem) is worth looking into if you want a quick'n'dirty way to create packages.