I was wondering if the majority of Debian users are completly dependent on apt-get, or if you install your own packages. I'd imagine sooner or later every Debian user does install from source, since there isn't a Debian package for every Linux app in existance. But do you ever install a Debian package and find it doesn't work well, then try installing it from source? The reason I ask is that a handful of the programs I've downloaded with apt-get don't seem to have all the necessary data or operate correctly. I installed gdesklets and gdesklets-data with apt-get, but out of 4 desklets I successfully stalled, only one of them will run. The others give me an error whenever I try to start them And then there's timidity and all it's related packages that I installed the other day. Then when I tried playing a midi file it didn't work, and I found out not only do I not have a /etc/timidity.cfg file, but I don't have a single instrument installed!!!

I'm just a little disgruntled with apt-get right now (or maybe it's my lack of experience I should be blaiming). I thought it was the end all get-it-and-go package installer and I didn't think I'd encounter as many problems as I have. So are you guys ever forced to install from source to get a particular package working correctly?

Of course it's possible to install applications from source also in Debian. But I expect people who prefer installing from source would rather use a disto like Slackware or Crux that don't have anything like APT. It's a matter of preference whether you want to install your apps the hard way or whether you prefer that the package management system does all the hard work for you. If you choose the latter option, it makes sense that you try to help the package management system to become better.

Have you considered doing something positive about the failures you've discovered in APT? Build better binary packages for gdesklets and timidity and commit them to Debian developers. Or use the bug reporting system to make a feature request. Try to be a team player.

If there aren't too many files needed and there's no debian package I'll downlaod and install manually. Saves a lot of time searching apt souces, and lots of times there are apt-sources that don't work for me (for example the one at the official kde site it tells me the complete line I need to add but for working, no way) Also sometimes when the program seems to be hard to get working (mplayer for me but I don't think I need it anyway noatun runs what I want) I'll use source as often there are a lot of tutorials for it and though these might eb for different distros it's easy to do the same steps in debian for me

Some of the desklets require additional packages to function. For example, the startbar-desklet requires python-xdg. The additional packages are tagged as recommended since requiring them may lead to people install extra packages they may not want or need. You can view them at this page:
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gdesklets-data

For timidity, you can instruments from timidity-patches; it's part of the stable branch, so if you have your apt sources pointed only to unstable or testing, you won't see it. You can update your source list or download it from here:
http://packages.debian.org/stable/so...midity-patches

For help configuring timidity,

Yeah the thing I don't like about installing from source is that you have to keep a personal list to remind yourself what you installed by source. And then I hear that its a good thing to keep around the original tarball you installed from in case you want to uninstall it, which means if you did that then you'd be taking up almost twice as much diskspace for the program than you need to.

I'm not experienced enough to build better binary packages (yet). I am a team player though! (points to sig) Don't just write me off as a leech

There is a utility called apt-build that works like apt-get, but it builds the packages from source. You can optimize packages for your system. It's still a work-in-progress and contains some bugs; for one, it won't rebuild packages that are already installed. Personally, I don't think it's worth the time and effort to build from source. But if you're the compiling type, it gives you another install alternative.