You know what, Debian is sometimes too good I think. I love dpkg/apt-get/synaptic so much that I am very reluctant to install software where there isn't a .deb for it somewhere. Does anyone else suffer from this same "laziness"? How do you manage the software you install that doesn't come from apt-get? What do you do when you have a piece of software that has a new and improved version only available for source, but the .deb version is far behind? Do you just wait for the package to eventually upgrade? Do you uninstall your package and install the source? Do you let both versions co-exist on your system? Do you create your own packages from source locally?


These are just some questions I was wondering about Debian users and their software management practices. Thanks.

Yes, I get lazy for all the reasons you cite.
I usually look around for a .deb. If not, I'll alien an .rpm. And if I want the program badly enough, I'll do a .tar.gz.
Honestly, though, my needs are modest--almost always the program I want is in the Ubuntu repositories.

Being a Slackware user I find apt and synaptic to be very enjoyable. I've just got this new shiny Debian system up and running, I'm happy with it. It's good to be lazy:-) If I need the latest version of something I'll go out and get the .deb version or a tar.gz version. Right now everything is working well, I don't want to break it.

You have realized one of the advantages of Debian , the package system.

I have ran Debian for almost a year, and I have tons of apps on my system. In that time I have only install 2 things from source and for the life of me I can't remember what they were. The only things on my system that didn't get install through APT/Synaptic are Opera and CrossOver Office. Synaptic says I have 2276 packages installed.

Yes, apt and synaptic are truly amazing. I've been using a succession of distros on this Linux box looking for a replacement for Mandrake 10.1.
I've tried Mandriva 2005, Suse 9.1, Suse 9.3.
I've found my distro, Debian 3.1 is it!

I run the Testing version of Debian which has most of the up-to-date versions.

I usually install the newest versions of applications that aren't in testing yet, but are available in unstable, by downloading the source from unstable and compile it on my testing box. Therefore I have the source repositories of unstable in my 'sources.list' instead of the source repositories of testing. By using 'apt-get build-dep packagename' you install the packages needed to build the package on your system. 'apt-get source -b packagename' downloads the source from unstable and builds a deb package from it.

If a package isn't available in the Debian repositories, but it has a debian/rules section in the source (for example MPlayer), I build a deb package using the 'DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=" compile_options" fakeroot debian/rules binary' command. I install the created deb package using 'dpkg -i'.

If a source doesn't have a debian/rules section I create a deb package using the 'checkinstall' tool. So I use the './configure' and './make' commands to configure and compile the source. Then I use the 'checkinstall -D' command instead of the './make-install' command to install the program and create a deb package.

So as you see, I always use deb packages, it's a lot easier when you want to remove a program. But I'm absolutely not lazy.

You should try 'checkinstall', it's a great tool.

Debs built for your architecture and release are compatible and will almost always work and work well.

However, sometimes I pine for newer versions, like K3B .12, and there is a repository with latest debs built for Sarge:
deb http://www.planet-moll.de/debian sarge main
In fact, there are many alt. repositories with backports that makes running Sarge on the desktop viable. Compiling can be tricky and newer versions sometimes require newer libraries. it's much easier letting dpkg keep track of your software.

I don't think you're being lazy at all; I think it's playing safe.

That's the kind of response I was really looking for McCloud. Thanks. Now I just have to get myself un-lazy enough to actually use apt-get from the command line instead of always relying on Synatpic to do my dirty work.