I've sent sulu a PM, hopefully he can e-mail me the packages and I can post them in qole.org/files for everyone to grab. Hopefully, too, I can make a new image using these packages...

The solution that sulu arrived at is very similar to my solution. He built fake new packages with old files, I installed the new files and then overwrote the new files with the old files. I like sulu's method better, because Debian really thinks it has the newest version... We should do that for gconf too.

Ok, please find sulu's hacked pulseaudio packages here.

I noticed that for some reason my packages although having the same version number seem to be considered upgradeable by synaptic. It showed me that there's an update for pulseaudio. In a first test I changed the Debian revision from 1 to 99 which solved the issue and should leave enough tolerance for future revisions made by Debian.

@qole:
I'll send you new packages tomorrow.

In completely unrelated news, I just remembered that I needed to promote my newer versions to Extras-testing. So if you get a moment, please vote for the latest versions of Easy Chroot and Easy Debian that have been languishing in Extras-devel for months now...

Thank qole and sulu, and I just can't wait to hear news how programs from Squeeze work with "fake" gconf2 version...

After having had a closer look at the dependencies I think changing the revision number would not be a good idea because some packages depend on one exact version of another package. Of course I could adjust the dependencies of all the packages I changed but then I'd also have to repackage other related packages just because of the dependencies while they technically work fine and I don't know where that would end.
So I'd suggest we stay with the current set of packages and just set them on hold.

Edit:
I just completed the pulseaudio instructions in the wiki article.

Just a brainwave concerning the gconf2 problem that I never encountered so far:

Usually I start Debian applications from within a fully loaded Easy Debian (with LXDE) and not via debbie.
However, today I started Iceweasel via debbie and got this error message:Is this the error message that you have in mind when talking about gconf2 problems?
For verification I loaded the original unchanged Easy Debian image and did not get that message so obviously something has changed in the gconf-dbus communication.
I googled a bit and found some posts (also involving hal) that suggest that it might be a permission problem.

Well, I'm certainly not an expert, neither with hal nor with dbus or gconf but as a shot in the dark I started iceweasel via debbie and sudo in my dist-upgraded image:And I did not get that error message which I think indicates that in general the communication works fine. So I believe the combination gconf2/Maemo is not broken the way pulseaudio is. I rather think it's a simple permission problem. Can somebody with more knowledge please have a look at this? It could spare us another evil hack on the way to a fully working Squeeze.


Edit:
Oh, btw and totally unrelated: I think adding pipe to .xbindkeysrc would be nice:No idea if Shift + Down is the most intuitive combination but it works for me.

I also use most applications through LXDE (ho ever, I actually run Iceweasel via shortcut, which is debbie equivalent).

The problem with gconf2 is (was?) much worse - last time I checked, after installation of LibreOffice I got 3/4 of application menus unusable (blank "----" lines or unspecified characters instead of proper text). This is the symptom I remember from top of my head, qole would be - probably - capable of more techie explanation.

I didn't encounter the problem you describe. My menus are just fine.
Afaik lxpanel just reads the contents of /usr/share/applications without any man in the middle. However gconf2 might have messed up that directory when you tried.