Change from SuSE to Debian

[pete atkinson <pete@poa.uklinux.net>]

I would appreciate some tips...

I have been running SuSE in various releases for the last 3 years and like(d) 
to think I had a good grasp of what was going on.

In an effort to expand my knowledge, I have commandeered a spare box that I 
have and have chosen 'Potato' as my first Debian distribution. (It is a 400 
Celeron, 8Gb Disk, 512Mb RAM, Nvidia TNT2 graphics, Realtek NIC (no sound 
card) and an old IBM SVGA monitor - which will be replaced when funds allow)

Boy ! what a difference - I am plodding through various HOWTO's and have 
configured my display and network card successfully (big deal some might say 
!) but the thing that is getting me is the whole culture change between the 
relatively spoon fed SuSE and the somewhat (to me) esoteric Debian.

Are there any hints/tips/watch-out-fors that you could offer, principally, I 
am a bit confused over the non-RPMness of packages and the lack of the config 
suites such as YAST/YAST2 that SusE employs.

I hope you can help and apologise if this seems a woolly request

Regards

Pete