Getting started w/ Debian

[mailinglist at endosquid.com (Brendan)]

On Tuesday 20 July 2004 10:27, Drew Taylor wrote:
> So I'm looking more for thoughts that might help a (Debian) newbie. I've
> been using RedHat for years, so I'm no stranger to Linux. Any gotchas,
> important hints, etc that might be specific to Debian are appreciated.

Debian is going to be insanely weird if you have been using Red Hat with no 
exposure to up2date, yum, apt4rpm, etc.

Keep a good /etc/apt/sources.list, because this is your system's world. It 
won't look anywhere else for updates/software than here, really.

Tips (at least from me): for a desktop, stick with unstable, and for a server, 
I have done well with stable/testing.

Alias the commands used for apt, because it's weird to type: apt-get 
dist-upgrade, so:

alias acs='apt-cache search'
alias ag='apt-get'
alias agdu='apt-get -V dist-upgrade'
alias agi='apt-get -V install'
alias agu='apt-get update'
alias aguu='apt-get -V upgrade'


A good /etc/apt/sources.list for my unstable system at work:
deb http://ftp.at.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.at.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

# the non-US Debian packages.  Uncomment the deb-src line if you
# want 'apt-get source' to work with non-US packages.
deb http://debian.teleglobe.net/non-US/ unstable/non-US main contrib non-free

I run an apt-get update everyday to keep current, and sometimes, I check out 
apt-get upgrade to see what's going to upgrade. It's dorky, but it keeps the 
good times rolling.

B