I have looked high and low, found pieces but nothing comprehensive about installing rpm's using apt. I am familiar with rpm but not apt. I decided to install Knoppix 3.7 on my hard drive. All went well with the install and I am quite impressed thus far. There is a major, but very pleasant, difference in apt as opposed to rpm. It may be because I don't know where to go yet for apt based packages, i.e. rpmfind, so I may be looking in all the wrong places. Specifically, i have found a small application that I would like to try out but it is only in rpm format. So what I get thus far is I can use alien to convert the rpm to a deb. Then I 'THINK?' I have to alter the apt sources file for apt to include a directory on my local hard drive. Then, if I understand this correctly, I can apt-get the alien converted package(being careful to put it in my sources listed local directory) and it will find it becuse I have altered the apt config to look locally for packages. Is this normal usage for apt/knoppix. I don't see a command line option for apt-get install to tell it to look locally.
My apologies if this is addressed in another thread, I have looked but I can't find it.

Thanks.