[techtalk] The general case of installing a non-Debian thingie on a Debian system

[Laurel Fan]

Excerpts from linuxchix: 19-Sep-100 [techtalk] The general case.. by
J-Mag Guthrie at brokersys. 
> I've never installed a non-Debian anything and I'm paranoid.

Don't be too worried.  If it's not a core component of the system,
and if there isn't really anything that depends on it[1], you should
be fine, as long as you don't install over your old stuff, which
probably won't happen (when compiling from source, stuff is usually
installed in /usr/local by default, which debian packages are not
allowed to do).  If you do this, make sure /usr/local/bin is in your
path, and before the other stuff, so that your shell will run your
new one instead of the debian one.

The 'which' and 'where' commands (in (t)csh, don't know about
bash) are useful for determining if this is the case.

Of course, you can always remove the debian package before
installing your new one, if you want to be completely sure.