diff --git a/DownloadDebianPackages.md b/DownloadDebianPackages.md
index b3e31df..ac80b2a 100644
--- a/DownloadDebianPackages.md
+++ b/DownloadDebianPackages.md
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+# Debian Packages
+
 Precompiled Tahoe packages are available for Debian-like systems, using
 recent releases of Debian or Ubuntu. There are also precompiled packages for
 several of the necessary support libraries which are not already in the
@@ -80,18 +82,15 @@ refrain from running unit tests.
 ## Building From Source On Debian Systems
 
 Many of Tahoe's build dependencies can be satisfied by first installing
-certain debian packages: simplejson is one of these. Some debian/ubuntu
-platforms do not provide the necessary .egg-info metadata with their
-packages, so the Tahoe build process may not believe they are present. Some
-Tahoe dependencies are not present in most debian systems (such as foolscap
-and zfec): debs for these are made available in the APT repository described
-above.
-
-The Tahoe build process will acquire (via setuptools) most of the libraries
-that it needs to run and which are not already present in the build
-environment).
+certain debian packages, and the Tahoe build process will download and build
+many of the others. Please see source:docs/debian.txt for details about
+building Tahoe on a debian-based system.
 
 ## Building a Debian Package
 
 Please see source:docs/debian.txt for details about building your own debian
 packages from a Tahoe source tree.
+
+Note that this is entirely optional. Tahoe will run just fine from a source
+tree: creating a debian package is merely a convenience for sysadmins to help
+them manage large numbers of Tahoe nodes with established tools like apt-get.