Using `alien` to install a rpm-package on Debian, or just install it with `rpm`?

Question

Are there any reasons to use alien to install an rpm-package on Debian, or could I just as well just install the package with rpm?

Answer 1

Quoting /usr/share/doc/rpm/README.Debian:

Please do not use rpm directly to install packages. Install the alien package and use the alien command to convert/install a rpm package using dpkg. Use of rpm to install packages is verbosely complaining on Debian systems (you can disable these warnings by --force-debian).

The reason is that, even using the Debian rpm package, rpm doesn't know about the packages managed by dpkg, so it can't use them to resolve dependencies.