Question for Debianers

[KevinO]

Derek Neighbors wrote:

> The biggest item is that Debian is not like other distributions in how
> works on upgrade. Upgrading from Potato to Woody is literally as easy as
> chaning a few lines in a config file.  (actually a few words) then doing
> apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade
> 

How much of a problem is this to do if you are living with very limited 
bandwidth? I would like to try out Deb on one of my boxes but the lack of 
bandwidth here gives me pause.

I have, in the past, taken my laptop down to bandersnatch and used wget to 
grab all of the updates for Mandrake. With multiple boxes this makes life 
easier and faster.

I am getting a little tired of repairing Mandrake installs tho., even if I've 
gotten pretty good at it ;-)

Any words of advice to make this transition a little smoother? How much 
trouble is it to update a box on-the-quick from source to fix a security 
problem if you aren't willing to wait for a deb package? (ie: apache and sshd 
as recent examples) Can this be done without messing up the package management 
or will I be forced to have a 'mixed system' like I have with Redhat and 
'drake, or wait for the pkgs?
-- 
KevinO

Matz's Law:
         A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.