First Debian install was a fiasco

[Tim <tim.hoebeek@vub.ac.be>]

Hi,

I'm new to Debian and have some questions.

I like the stability and security of the stable branch, but would like 
more frequent updates for certain packages (on a workstation, at least).

I used the new installer (beta) to install a stable base version. I 
installed no extra packages at that time, because I was going to install 
the necessary packages later on with apt.
I've read some sites about apt pinning and added the testing and 
unstable repositories to my sources.list file.

So far, so good, but then the problems began. I didn't know how to find 
out which version of a package was in which branch. I still don't know 
how to do it, but I decided to be brave and install KDE 3.2.x, so I went 
"apt-get -t unstable install kde" and hell started.

After some forcing and trial and error, I know this is not the way to do 
it, but I still don't know what is. Can anybody tell me what I did wrong 
and what I should do?


Thanks a ton,
Tim