Get access to packages from the Debian unstable branch

Originally by TcT and edited by frontalot and Hans-Gran Puke from linkstationwiki.org

Unstable Packages
It is often useful to have access to the Debian unstable branch because it has some interesting packages like PHP5 and rTorrent (a C++ Torrent client which is much less CPU intensive than the original bittorrent and also easier to use from console). Using the unstable packages saves you the time to compile these packages your self. The good thing is you don't have to change your whole installation to unstable you can simply use your stable or testing repository and just use the packages not in there from the unstable repository.

And it's easy
APT::Default-Release "stable"; Note: If you upgraded your distro to "testing", you'll want to use "testing" instead of "stable" here. deb http://ftp.freenet.de/debian/ unstable main deb-src http://ftp.freenet.de/debian/ unstable main you can find alternates closer to you on the web. For example those 2 lines: deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free are just as good! apt-get -t unstable install rtorrent If you wish to grab the "testing" version, use: apt-get -t testing install rtorrent Note: If you get an error like this later (after you added the repositories to your sources.list): W: Couldn't stat source package list http://http.us.debian.org unstable/main Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/http.us.debian.org_debian_dists_unstable_main_binary-mipsel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory) it means that you need to add the following line to the /etc/apt/apt.conf: APT::Cache-Limit 18582912;
 * Edit or create the file /etc/apt/apt.conf and add those 2 lines:
 * Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add the following lines:
 * Replace ftp.freenet.de with any mirror you are using.
 * Run apt-get update to update the list of packages. Now you can access the unstable packages. If you want to install or use rTorrent just type: