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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?

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The stable/testing/unstable/experimental paradigm is very central for the Debian project, and I would recommend that you at least get some understanding for the concept when using the operating system. See Debian's homepage or whatever resource suits you for more info. – Daniel Andersson Apr 3 '12 at 18:21
Why the negative votes on the question? People, vote for the quality of the question, don't judge his understanding of Debian. – Gnoupi Apr 16 '12 at 16:09
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People often downvote questions that are easily found in a FAQ or a basic Google search. I agree that a downvoted question should usually be accompanied by a comment that helps someone ask better questions in the future, but the system doesn't actually force anyone to do that. – CodeGnome Apr 16 '12 at 16:31

3 Answers

up vote 5 down vote

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.

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I think you forgot the repository-update (sudo aptitude update) after changing the line, without which it wouldn't pick up any changes. – Darael Apr 3 '12 at 20:07
@Darael you're right, thanks!! – Apiman Apr 3 '12 at 21:01
Pretty bad idea to use unstable unless he's a dev himself, because the breakage rate is quite big there, and it's the place where one should carefully pick his updates (as they may break other stuff). Testing is a good bet instead, and can be even more stable than Arch, speaking of AUR. – Victor Nitu Apr 10 '12 at 16:50
up vote 2 down vote

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.

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up vote 0 down vote

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.

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