dselect, dpkg, apt, gnome-apt???

["MacKenzie, Andrew" <Andrew.MacKenzie@Cognos.COM>]

On the subject of what is the best distribution, I love Debian.  I am
familiar with both Slackware and RH 5.0 and had real issues with both of
these before I decided to buy a CD with Debian 2.1.  It is great.

My only real problem is the methods of keeping current.  I install packages
using dpkg -i <packagename>.  I find the .deb packages on the ftp site or
other sites, download them then install.  If there are dependencies, I go
looking for the required packages and install them.

Is this the right way to do things in Debian?  I gave up on dselect because
of the huge number of packages you must look at.  I tried apt but it told me
some of my packages were configured wrong and would not go on.  How would I
change this?

Also, gnome-apt, do I need gnome to run this?  I have KDE 1.1 and like it.

Andrew MacKenzie