OK I'm new to debian (been using it for about 3 months now). My system is pretty much vanilla, not that much in terms of out of distro apps, etc. I just downloaded the DVD iso for r4 and would like to upgrade my system to it. How do I do it?

TIA.

You don't need the DVD. Just add some online repositories (like software warehouses) in the sources.list file, found in /etc/apt/ You'll need to edit that file as root. Save the file, then open a terminal, become root with su, enter your root password and then issue this command on a single line:This command sequentially tells aptitude to keep all installed packages, update the cache on newer packages available and upgrade your entire system to the latest packages. For next upgrades, if done online, only the 2 last commands suffice (you can leave out the keep-all option entirely). Aptitude only commences the next step if the previous one didn't give errors, so it's safer then issuing each command manually.

Note, you'll need a decent flat-rate internet connection. If you don't have that, use the DVD and the addcd(rom) tool. Dunno exactly how it's called, I never used it