IMHO "alien" isn't much of an issue since LSB packages are allowed to use only a small subset of RPM features; the fancier features aren't portable between diff

IMHO "alien" isn't much of an issue since LSB packages are allowed to use only a small subset of RPM features; the fancier features aren't portable between different RPM-based distros either. http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/pkgscripts.html http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-gener... http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/pkgdepend.html http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/LSB_4.1.0/LSB-Core-gener... A bigger problem is Debian gratuitously using different SONAME than required by LSB for some libraries - your LSB binary can't use those system libraries if it wants to run on Debian. But at least it looks like they fixed that problem in Wheezy.