GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
Desktop Survival Project Home Preface Advocacy History Distributions Installation Basic Survival Wajig Audio AbiWord APM Backup Bash Booting Cameras CD Chinese ChRoot Clock Commercial Conference Management Configuration CRON CVS Databases DIA Directories Disks Documentation DVD Email Eye of Gnome Evolution File Systems Firewalls Floppy Disks Fonts Ghemical GIMP Glade Gnome GnuCash Gnumeric GQView Graphics Groups HTML Editors ImageMagick Initialisations on Booting Java KDE Kernels Keyboard Konqueror KVM Switch LaTeX Log System Login Magellan Mathematics Memory Modems Mounting Devices MS/Windows Music MySQL Nautilus Networks NFS NT File System OpenOffice.org Oracle Packages Partitions Passwords PDF Photos PPP Presentations Printing Python R Remote Desktops Rsync Samba Scanning Science Security SH File System Sketch Spell SPlus Spruce SSH SUDO Subversion Swap Themes USB Video Virtualization Web Word X XML Sample Installations Troubleshooting Index

The Basic Debian Tools

The Debian package apt-howto is a good place to start with understanding the apt (for Advanced Packaging Tools) suite of tools. Once installed browse the file /usr/share/doc/apt-howto/en/index.html.

Also, see the Debian FAQ at http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/. In particular, Section 6 deals with the Packaging system. The Advanced Package Tool (apt) is the recommended way of managing packages under Debian. The command line interface is apt-get but it is also used within wajig dselect, deity, and aptitude. See http://newbieDoc.sourceForge.net/system/apt-get-intro.html for a great introduction to apt-get. Also see /usr/share/doc/apt/offline.html/index.html on your local Debian machine for using apt off line.