One way would be to install a VM running ubuntu under the alternative version of linux. I use this every day at work, where I have ubuntu and centos VMs running on VMWare Workstation under windows (and I have both setup with Samba, so I can copy files between VMs). In my past job I had Windows and Centos VMs running under an Ubuntu desktop.

I've had some experience of installing RPM packages under ubuntu using Alien, but it tends to be a game of basically unpacking the package to get the application tree, and putting it in /opt and then working through the scripts/config files to resolve dependencies to some other package or refer to something that is in a different path.

I suspect developing in an ubuntu VM will be much easier for you, especially as with X running on your desktop, you can forward X connections to your ubuntu VM and have the GUI display on your desktop, and if you setup your desktop to export /home via NFS, you could configure your VM to share your home folder within that NFS mount, so you can have your workspace on your native computer and just use the VM for emulation and compilation.