I know that .deb can’t be installed on Manjaro but is there any way to use it safely? Or should I just settle for using wine on the windows version, which I’m going to do for now if it works.
There’s no open-source code for the application and only a .deb file so I have to use it or use wine.
More often than not the software is available via AUR.
Look there.
You probably would have received suggestions had you mentioned the name of the software …
use a virtual machine like virtualbox and use a .deb-based distro inside the vm. no need for ms-windows.
You can try to convert it to arch package with debtap
Why not give us the software name you are trying to use? Might find that some one has already worked around your issue, or an alternative you haven’t thought of could be suggested.
Sometimes it is easy enough to open the .deb with an archive manager and see where the files need to be placed and manually do it.
And…
…so definitely worth a look.
… and that usually is the work that the PKGBUILD in AUR does for you - plus perhaps some adaptations/services that are different between Debian/Ubuntu and Arch
same goes for .rpm files which are also sometimes used
all with the benefit that the package manager (pacman) knows about what was done
which wouldn’t be the case if you do it “by hand”
It often is just a “recipe” how to unpack and where to put the files that are inside a foreign (.deb) package.