I'm not too familiar w/ KDE but it is a fairly complex desktop environment. So....not suprisingly when running the unstable version it stands to reason that some packages will make it into SID before others. That would certainly cause some delays in getting everything upgraded. XFCE4 is in the opposite direction. The Debian packages don't even come close to reflecting what xfce4 has turned into. Why? The way it's built has changed. Accordingly the maintainer of the xfce4.debs is going to have to make adjustments to the way he builds his .debs but surely they'll be done on his own time and agenda. Now, sometimes it's OK to force apt (even necessary) as it tries to stay on the safe side of things especially when there is doubt. I always laugh when someone posts "apt did it all by itself". No it didn't.

I've tried (not just read about) rpm's and I really feel that debs are vastly superior to rpm. I don't have time to build everything from source so Gentoo, Sourcemage, etc. are out of the question. I throw an absolute drag when I have to install software on windows boxes. Apt is so much easier.

All I can say is, the more you use apt the more you get to understand how it works. (well no kidding) I'm quite serious when I say that problems are rare. I do apt-get upgrade almost daily. Usually if something is broken you can find it at Debian bugs or someone in #kanotix (ask Sonya) will know about any bugs. Please do join us and you will learn alot! It is multinational irc channel where all levels of Debian users are expected and accepted unlike some other irc channels ( I won't mention any names) *cough* #debian........., where you might get flamed for simply saying hello.