cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42285031

I think i understand adding a link to /etc/apt/sources.list so apt knows to check there for packages. What i don't understand is how to find those links.

For example: i know i want xed, a plain text editor. Wikipedia tells me that's maintained by Linux Mint, but the Mint website doesn't, as far as i can tell, have a link to a repository for installing Mint-specific packages in another distro (assuming that's possible). It doesn't mention what i might want to put in sources.list.

The same is true of Cinnamon, Mate, Xfce, KDE, and Gnome. If i install Debian and it doesn't come with one of these listed in the aforementioned file (and it doesn't), i have no idea how to get packages from that repository unless i can also find a downloadable .deb file and it has no dependencies from unknown repositories, or i download the entire desktop environment i want just a few packages from.

For context: i plan to install Debian without a DE and just get what packages i want from across several DEs. This will be hard to do if there are no software sources for apt.

Is this hard to find because it's something that people who don't know what they're doing shouldn't mess with? Am i just looking in the wrong places, or for the wrong thing?

One thing i've successfully installed with apt (as opposed to a .deb package) is LibreWolf, which i used extrepo for in accordance with the instructions on their website. Should i be using that instead for packages meant for specific desktop environments?