I can't think of a better way to spend one's time -- except maybe switching that damn box over to OS X server.
Except that would only work for Macs
apt-get is just as bad as RPM hell was it seems.
Yey, I'm not the only person who loathes apt \o
Except I only loathe it after a week of using
conary for package management.
conary thought of everything it seems.. Including what you're talking about. You can specify the repository location when installing a package, and updates to only that package will come from that repository.
And this is a variant of the same shit I was going through since 1998: get your Linux box running nice and comfortably, but don't update a damn thing or you'll regret it you poor bastard!
No, don't update to UNSTABLE releases. With OS X you don't have access to the unstable releases, so count yourself lucky.
Updating with apt is typically a breeze. It's one thing it nearly got right. With OS X, you gotta go to the package's website (ok, for 3rd-party packages), and manually download and install the package. That's what you'll have to do when OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 comes out (it's coming), right (let's pretend you use it)? Poor bastard - that's over 130 megabytes!
(apt doesn't support incremental updates (conary does) - you gotta download the entire package again. For that reason, OOo is split into multiple packages, only some of them will need to be updated. Anyhow, at least there's no going to openoffice.org, you can have it update automatically)
X is a legacy POS that needs replaced with something else that has the same functionality. Sorry, I don't want to spend 3 hours hacking at my xorg.conf anymore than I want to go back to toying with autoexec.bat files to play some new game I bought. Move on.
Xorg sucks, because of xorg.conf? Ubuntu works great with it, without any xorg.conf hacking..
Oh, you chose DEBIAN.
Of course you're gonna need to hack it! (besides, doesn't it use xfree86?)
What's the problem with Xorg?