from which other distro can we steal packages?

[jls]

Is there any other distro which follow the tc philosofy (/usr/local) form where we can steal packages?

[jpeters]

Is there any other distro which follow the tc philosofy (/usr/local) form where we can steal packages?

The issue isn't /usr/local, it's the package not being compiled to tc.  Of course,  if it's a static build or something that works, it could be placed anywhere and just linked to /usr/local/   

[u54749]

You can quite easily poach binaries from the older Debian repositories, like this one
http://packages.debian.org/etch/
Binaries from more recent repositories (like "lenny") will complain about outdated system libraries.
Dependency resolution is (of course) manual, but you will find most missing libraries on Debian too

Stuff I got running on my TC 1.4 this way include

- MAME (arcade game emulator) and gxmame (a frontend for it).  Mame runs excellent. Frontend has some small bugs but it's usable.
- galculator (a x X calculator applet).  This one is very easy to get running
- Xarchiver (a graphical zip/unzip gz/ungz etc tool).  I also installed the .deb for the RAR file format from Debian (unrar.tce is not recognized by Xarchiver)
- supertux (since a couple of days a supertux TCE for TC 2.0 is available - but the Debian version runs on TC1.4 too - works absolutely flawless)
- numlockx: an utility to switch the numlock LED on when you start X
- the Tuxkart game worked but had an appalling framerate so I uninstalled it.  If you have working 3D acceleration you could try this one
- gnuboy (Nintendo Gameboy emulator) works but the sound is very distorted

[kerpob]

Surely the Arch AUR repository is a good source. These are packages that haven't made it into the Arch pacman official repository, but are supported by various Arch users - you just have to download and build them yourselves (although they always build as they are maintained for Arch). Probably can be tweaked for TC by those who know.