3 Update The System

Now it's time to check for updates and install them. This is done using the Update Manager. If you see a notification in the taskbar that new updates are available, you can start the Update Manager by clicking on the update icon; otherwise you can start the Update Manager by going to System > Administration > Update Manager:

Type in the root password:

If new updates are available, the Update Manager will tell you so (you can click on the Check button to refresh the list), and you can click on the Install Updates button to install them. In my case, no updates were available:

4 Inventory Of What We Have So Far

Now let's browse all menus to see which of our needed applications are already installed:

You should find the following situation ([x] marks an application that is already installed, where [ ] is an application that is missing):

Graphics:
[x] The GIMP
[ ] F-Spot
[ ] Picasa

Internet:
[x] Firefox/Iceweasel
[ ] Opera
[ ] Google Chrome
[ ] Flash Player 10
[ ] FileZilla
[ ] Thunderbird/Icedove
[x] Evolution
[ ] aMule
[x] Transmission BitTorrent Client
[ ] Azureus/Vuze
[x] Empathy IM Client
[ ] Skype (i386 only)
[ ] Google Earth
[ ] Xchat IRC

Office:
[x] OpenOffice Writer
[x] OpenOffice Calc
[ ] Adobe Reader
[ ] GnuCash
[ ] Scribus

Sound & Video:
[ ] Amarok
[ ] Audacity
[ ] Banshee
[ ] MPlayer
[x] Rhythmbox Music Player
[ ] gtkPod
[ ] XMMS
[ ] dvd::rip
[ ] Kino
[x] Sound Juicer CD Extractor
[ ] VLC Media Player
[ ] Real Player (i386 only)
[x] Totem
[ ] Xine
[x] Brasero
[ ] K3B
[ ] Multimedia-Codecs

Programming:
[ ] KompoZer
[ ] Bluefish
[ ] Eclipse

Other:
[ ] VirtualBox
[ ] TrueType fonts
[ ] Java
[x] Read/Write support for NTFS partitions

So some applications are already on the system. NTFS read-/write support is enabled by default on Debian Squeeze.

5 Configure Additional Repositories

Some packages like the Adobe Reader are not available in the standard Debian repositories. The easiest way to make such packages available to your system is to add the Debian-Multimedia, Opera, Google, and Skype repositories (please note that for Debian Squeeze, Skype is only available for i386 systems, not x86_64 systems!).

First we open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal):

Become root...

su

... and edit /etc/apt/sources.list:

gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add contrib and non-free to the official Squeeze repositories that are already in the file, e.g. as follows...

[...]
deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free

deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates main contrib non-free
[...]

... and add the Debian-Multimedia (you can find a mirror close to you here), Opera, Google, and Skype repositories, e.g. like this:

[...]
deb http://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/debian-multimedia/ squeeze main non-free
deb-src http://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/debian-multimedia/ squeeze main non-free
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ squeeze non-free
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable main
deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free

Please do not add the Skype repository if you are on an x86_64 system - for Debian Squeeze, Skype is available only for the i386 platform!

Then install the keys for the added repositories:

wget http://www.debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/d/debian-multimedia-keyring/debian-multimedia-keyring_2010.12.26_all.deb
dpkg -i debian-multimedia-keyring_2010.12.26_all.deb

wget -O - http://deb.opera.com/archive.key | apt-key add -

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | apt-key add -

Finally update your package-list:

apt-get update