Are there alternate repositories for debian than:
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
Because stuff placed in there is really old. What can I do? Can I use arch's AUR somehow?
Are there alternate repositories for debian than:
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
Because stuff placed in there is really old. What can I do? Can I use arch's AUR somehow?
AFAIK you cannot use arch's AUR on debian but you can switch to testing.
You should substitute the word "stable" with testing in order to use these more updated repositories.
Change your /etc/apt/source.list file replacing "stable" with "testing". For the provided line it would be like this:
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
Now you have to update your local repository database:
sudo aptitude update
Then do a safe upgrade:
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
And finally, perform a full upgrade:
sudo aptitude full-upgrade
When finished, restart and you should be running testing.
From my point of view, testing is a nice balance between stability and recent packages. If you want to go for the latest packages you can use "unstable" instead, but I wouldn't recomend that.
sudo aptitude update
) after changing the line, without which it wouldn't pick up any changes.
This issue is clearly addressed in the Debian FAQ - Chapter 3 - Choosing a Debian distribution and not only explains why you should choose a particular Debian distribution, but how to upgrade it if you want newer packages.
You should also read up on apt-pinning and the APT::Default-Release
setting in /etc/apt/preferences
for additional options on how to run a mixed-release system. There are also special repositories like Debian Backports and squeeze-updates (formerly volatile) that may offer updated packages for your current distribution without requiring a switch away from stable--that's usually a better choice for production systems anyway.
There are the unstable
and testing
repositories, which has more recent packages; however they might break stuff.
As for AUR, you can't use it on Debian.