I am currently migrating from Ubuntu to Debian, and one thing that I am already missing in Ubuntu is to be able to enjoy the latest releases of packages (well, if you use the Unstable version, which is usually fine for personal usage)… 

For example, recently VLC released a 2.0.5 version, with nice upgrades, but Ubuntu won’t get them ready until the next release of 13.04… so, if you are like me and can’t wait, you can still get the latest updates faster, through adding PPA to your apt source list. The bad side is that you need to do this per package you want to keep getting updates (not so bad idea, as you probably don’t want all of them running loose at the risk of crashing the entire system, even though that does not really happen in Debian, lol)…

For VLC, here is the commands to type:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:videolan/stable-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y vlc 

Some other PPAs I leave under my install script:

• ppa:fkrull/deadsnakes – for older python support in newer Ubuntu releases
• ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp – latest GIMP updates
• ppa:webupd8team/java – next generation Java
• ppa:shutter/ppa – my preferred app for screenshots
• ppa:mozillateam/firefox-next – next generation Firefox

And some other packages are not publicly available in Ubuntu’s Launchpad, but still available for automatic updates. One good example:

Google Chrome

sudo add-apt-repository -y ‘deb http://dl.google.com/linux/    chrome/deb/ stable main’
wget -q -O – https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -

And, whenever you update all your packages (or automatically by the update manager, if enabled), you will get the latest stuff… Neat!