Hmmm.. well Synaptic can be used I guess.

For some reason however, my engine couldn't link against the SDL library located in /usr/lib. Also, I want to experiment with SDL1.3, which you have to download from the repository anyway. I ended up downloading the sources of both SDL1.2 and 1.3 and compiling them (dont forget to add /usr/local/lib to /etc/ld.so.conf so that the new shared objects can be found).

Most importantly, I learned how to compile and install things on linux which is a valuable skill