*-util is your friend
Back in the old days 
of config files, you had to manually edit various .cfg files in order to fix everything and make it work. This still works today, but why bother? This is the kind of automaticity that I would like to see more of in newer linux distributions.
Take, for example, the installation of new font files in a LaTeX (tetex) installation. You manually (or sometimes, through a script) install tfm/afm/vf/source files in the proper directories, then you put *.sty and *.fd files in tex/latex/proper-subdirectory. Ditto for *.enc and *.map files. Then, the big steps:
% sudo mktexlsr (or sudo texhash)
But you still don’t have the fonts because dvips and friends cannot find them. You have to add the necessary entry:
Map my_lovely_font.map
to the proper updmap.cfg file conveniently located somewhere either in /etc/updmap.d/ or /var/lib
And here is where the *-util friends come in handy.
% sudo update-updmap (and your updmap.cfg is set)
% sudo updmap-sys (and your system-wide installation is ready)
Similar steps should be taken usin fmtutil in order to set up new formats (pdftex,pdflatex etc) using newer hyphenation files.
Simple, easy, correct. The linux i like.
I.
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