Debian apt-get sources

I just installed Debian, but realized that hardly any of the packages I want are in stable. If if convert to testing (which is better then unstable?), how would I do that and what sources should I put in my sources.list file?

Originally posted by thcmwz I just installed Debian, but realized that hardly any of the packages I want are in stable. If if convert to testing (which is better then unstable?), how would I do that and what sources should I put in my sources.list file?

You would change the "stable" entries to "testing" then dselect update and apt-get -s dist-upgrade if everything looks good then remove the -s to actually do the dist-upgrade. After you have upgraded you should still as root run /sbin/lilo to re-install lilo to the MBR I'm not sure if the bug is fixed that will stop you from booting next time you (re)start the computer because lilo did not get installed properly better safe than sorry as they say.

thanks that is VERY helpful!!! One question left... what about the security (I read that testing takes longer to release security releases). Can you keep the stable version of the security updates?

No you can't.
If you want security updates for testing, you'll have to get the updated packages manually from unstable.

There are security updates in the testing branch. Add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

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


* however, these updates are not as timely as those in stable, so be prepared to trawl security announcements, and as iceman47 said, pull packages individually out of unstable manually.