apt-get question

["Christopher W. Aiken" <chris@cwaiken.com.INVALID>]

In FreeBSD there exists a "ports" tree with hundreds of
software titles that have been "ported" to FreeBSD.  One only
has to connect to Internet and do a "make; make install; make clean"
for FreeBSD to go to the proper FTP site(s)  to download the
software and install it.  The software that is downloaded is
saved in a special "distfiles" directory so that if you need
to re-install the Internet connection is not needed (i.e you
already have the pieces that are needed to build the package).

I'm a complete Debian newbee, having Debian installed a whole
three days now.  I would assume that the "apt-get" command 
does the similar software installs as the FreeBSD mentioned
above?  Does "apt-get" also save the downloaded software?
If so where would I look for it to save to a floppy or zip?

---                                   
Christopher W. Aiken, Scenery Hill, Pa, USA
chris at cwaiken dot com,   www.cwaiken.com
Preferred O/S: FreeBSD 4.0