In the event that I choose to 'break the rules' by installing a 3rd party app, I'll take responsibility for my actions with the understanding that I may need to do a reinstall if I break things.
BrendanC
That's what I do. I use some music apps, that don't install normally, based on
the available version of libfltk, but work fine year after year when installed
by rpm -i --nodeps.
This requires uninstalling and reinstalling them when using synaptic,
but it's an insignificant price to pay, for tools I use every week.