I use rpm everywhere... even in FreeBSD
You can use "alien" ( http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/alien/ ) to convert between rpm/dpkg/slp/slackware tgz if you don't like rpm
I got same error, when i have guichan 0.6.x Then i downloaded source rpm and built binary package, removed previous, installed new, and voila - now i'm playing tmw 0.0.24