Installing Debian packages

Apt configuration

It's nice to be able to run debian 'stable', yet still be able to install the occasional package from 'testing'. This can be done by adding both distributions to /etc/apt/sources.list, and configuring /etc/apt/apt.conf so that apt only gets 'stable' by default.

Here's a sample /etc/apt/sources.list using UK mirrors:

deb http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.debian.org/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free

deb http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free

With these settings, to install package foo from 'testing', you would do this:

apt-get install foo/testing

To install a package of a particular version:

apt-get install package-name=version

Upgrades

The packages in Debian 'stable' tend to be quite stable indeed; when they're upgraded, it's for a good reason, typically because of security fixes or other serious bugs. You should get these upgrades regularly, e.g. once a week, by typing:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade