Debian
In debian install-recommends defaults to "true", which means that you will get all sorts of unnecessary extra packages when installing software
Check the settings with apt-config dump
To circumvent this, put this in a file in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/
APT::Install-Recommends "false";
Debian 6 & postgresql
In debian 6.0 psql is linked to the lesser developed libedit instead of libreadline, see this or this
It can be bypassed by launching psql like this:
LD_PRELOAD=/lib/libreadline.so.6 psql
Debian 6 && nonfree
In debian 6 they changed policy about nonfree firmware blobs in kernels - and all those were moved to packages in non-free. In order to get full support for my realtek card(!) i need to
apt-get install firmware-realtek update-initramfs -u