APT Fun

Apt-get is the Debian "killer app"; for 99% of users, 99% of the time, using it is simple, easy, and fun. Simply update your /etc/apt/sources.list, then do apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, and you are good to go.

My strategy

Here is a copy of my sources.list. My strategy is to run stable for most stuff and get a subset of X11 applications and necessary libraries I want, without having to run a gnome desktop (I like sawfish by itself).

Tip: building source packages

Sometimes I like to build a custom source package into a .deb. Your reasons for doing this may vary. Assuming that you have the proper deb-src line in your sources.list, you can fetch a source package by running apt-get source package. You can then modify and build it into a deb. In the source directory created, you should usually run ./debian/rules binary to build the deb. You can then install it with dpkg.

This is where the fun begins. If you apt-get upgrade after that, apt will want to wipe out your custom deb with the standard binary deb, because it's checksum doesn't match what is listed on the server. To stop this behavior, the best thing I found to do is to set the custom package on hold, by executing echo 'package hold' | dpkg --set-selections. It seems to work for me for the time being.