www.apt-get.org

[ButtDog]

A site totally devoted to unofficial Debian packages. Make sure that you are using the packages from the right version of Debian that you have, or else you are seriously going to mess up some libraries.

Woody = Stable

Sarge = Testing

Sid = Unstable

Potato = stable 2.2 kernel series release that has a lot of stuff back-ported to this distro.

When cross mixing packages, make sure you go to the Debian homepage to read about the packages, and the libraries that are requires. Apt-get is awesome, but still cumbersome.

[Void Main]

I don't find it cumbersome. I have installed a couple of Debian systems recently. I did minimal network installs of Woody, changed my sources.list to point to SID (unstable) repositories and did an "apt-get update", then "apt-get dist-upgrade" and bingo, I'm running SID with the latest software. If you like a graphical package manager for a crutch then Synaptic can't be beat (apt-get install synaptic).

[ButtDog]

Thanks Void...

The testing/unstable Distro of Debian might not be the most intriguing thing for a fisrt-time Deb user. Once you go into Sarge/Sid (testing/unstable) you *ARE* going to find yourself in a world of sh***t. I'll bet my weekly $110(US) freelance web-design paycheck on it. (No, I am not doing to well... )

The http://www.apt-get.org page has a lot of backports from the packages availible in Sid , and Sarge, availible for the Woddy user (How they come up with these funky names is beyond me : ) )

You have loads of availible packages at that site...more than enough to get you started. They have mplayer, divx4linux, j2re1.3(Blackdown), KDE 3.1, the latest editions of WINE, and every mod you can think of. If you are running potato, they have rack of stuff for that version of Deb, as well. There is, also, the entire X-system package, the latest PHP-mods, and the latest SQL updates.

Once you are running Woody, you can upgrade to KDE 3.1, and then hit off http://k3b.sourceforge.net and grab K3B for Woody. There are Deb packages availible. That thing runs better than Nero, once it is configured.

Of course, you can always do the old Crtl-F on Mozilla (or Phoenix..those are there too) and search for other great Deb utilities, like debconf (which will be availible in Sarge, once it goes public.)

Good stuff.....

[bazoukas]

k2b is excellent. Period.
Too bad I cant make it detect my Cdroms under knoppix 3.2
I need to enable scsi emulation and the only way to do it in knoppix is to recompile the kernel. Bah.