Rob Hurle wrote: > Does anyone have advice on the best way to handle a .deb package? The easiest way is to not handle .deb files at all. Instead allow apt-get to install the package and any dependencies from the network. > Can I make up my own repository of .deb packages and point apt-get > at that to install packages? Yes. Many of us do that for packages that we create ourselves. But if you are new to Debian then this isn't something I recommend for you to do yet. Get some familiarity with the system before trying such advanced topics. > I've installed one or two small things (gcc and gnu make) using > dpkg, but I wondered if there was a better way to do this. What!? Why? In the future just use apt-get to install things that you want. $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install gcc $ sudo apt-get install make If you are compiling programs then you will want to install the build-essential package at the least to pull in many of the tools that you need. $ sudo apt-get install build-essential And if you have a package in mind that you want to tinker with and to rebuild yourself in different ways then you can install all of the build dependencies for that package. $ sudo apt-get build-dep grep $ sudo apt-get build-dep coreutils $ sudo apt-get build-dep whatever And if 'sudo' isn't configured for you then that is the first thing that you will want to do. :-) # visudo rob ALL=(ALL) ALL > I've just downloaded opera and it comes in a .deb package, so this > is my next task. apt or dpkg - or even synaptic? Yes. For Opera on Debian see the instructions on the wiki which go into detail what you should do. http://wiki.debian.org/Opera Bob
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