2.5 Supporting diversity

Debian offers several avenues to accommodate any wishes of the system administrator without breaking the system.

• dpkg-divert, see The dpkg-divert command, Section 6.5.1.

• equivs, see The equivs package, Section 6.5.2.

• update-alternative, see Alternative commands, Section 6.5.3.

• make-kpkg can accommodate many boot loaders. See make-kpkg(1) and Debian standard method, Section 7.1.1.

Any files under /usr/local/ belong to the system administrator and Debian will not touch them. Most files under /etc/ are conffiles and Debian will not overwrite them upon upgrade unless the system administrator requests so explicitly.