Considering an iPad?
I found these notes by Rick Mansfield of This Lamp helpful. Rick has many of the same interests I do, and I found his comments directly relevant to the sort of questions I have.
Aptitude for Debian-Based Systems
A very nice post at Linux Magazine explains the benefits of Aptitude and the basics of how to use it. Aptitude takes the apt-get command and provides a menu driven system. This is one of those nifty old menu systems that runs in your terminal window. Enjoy!