After spending some time with Dapper on my laptop, last week I wiped it out and installed Etch. Sounds like it's getting close to becoming stable, so I want to get familiar with it. For the few production servers I maintain, there is only one operating system... Debian stable. I like software that does not change. As far as I'm concerned, the release cycles are too short. Anyway, I am going to dedicate myself to learning as much as my brain can contain about the operating system and tonight I found a slide presentation by Lars Wirzenius on packaging. The first thing he suggests familiarizing yourself with is the Debian Policy Manual, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, and the Linux Standard Base. More than a little light reading.
Oh so much to learn, but I'm starting to understand packaging now. There are some things about building that I'm not so sure about. Need to study things like gcc and of course it'd probably be good to get better at using gpg encryption. I've tried a couple times at learning gpg, and made a few mistakes but I'm starting to get a handle on that too.