Backports

Introduction

You are running Debian stable, because you prefer the stable Debian tree. It runs great, there is just one problem: the software is a little bit outdated compared to other distributions. That is where backports come in.

Backports are recompiled packages from testing (mostly) and unstable (in a few cases only, e.g. security updates), so they will run without new libraries (wherever it is possible) on a stable Debian distribution. I recommend you to pick out single backports which fits your needs, and not to use all backports available here.

http://backports.org/

Preparation

Add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list

#deb http://www.backports.org/debian/ sarge-backports main
#or use a mirror http://www.backports.org/debian/README.mirrors.html
deb ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/backports.org/ sarge-backports main contrib non-free

Deactivate all packages from backports.org

Add to /etc/apt/preferences

Package: *
Pin: release a=sarge-backports
Pin-Priority: 200

Install Packages

Activate a package (e.g. mutt)

Add these lines to /etc/apt/preferences

Package: mutt
Pin: release a=sarge-backports
Pin-Priority: 999

Then run

apt-get update
apt-get install mutt

Easy way

apt-get -t sarge-backports install mutt

Links

http://backports.org/instructions.html