Howto install recent mono on a Linux distro other than Suse (e.g. Debian/Ubuntu)?

How does one go about installing a recent version of mono on a linux distro other than Novell's Suse?

http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page promises a "Linux" download, but they 'only' offer downloads for Suse and links to outdated versions of mono ( < version 2).

I have a compiler and am not afraid to use it ... but would feel much better if someone could point me to a "HowTo install Mono on Debian/Ubuntu" description or show me where to download a .deb of a recent version.

From http://www.mono-project.com/Other_Downloads:

Mono is available in the current stable Debian release and in later versions. To develop software with Mono, install the mono-devel package on Etch (4.0) using aptitude or similar package manager.

So just apt-get install mono-devel, perhaps?

UPDATE: The version of Mono that you'll get from Ubuntu 8.04 is 1.2.6, whereas you're probably looking for 2.0.1, which comes with 9.04. Probably your best bet is to upgrade to Jaunty. There's a possibility that downloading the Jaunty .deb and installing it on your machine will work, but I wouldn't bet on it.

For ubuntu, many more up to date packages are available using the Personal Package Archives on launchpad.net.

If you are using ubuntu 8.04 (hardy) then the most relevant one would appear to be https://launchpad.net/~mono-edge/+archive/ppa

If you want the really bleeding edge mono, then there is a mono-testing PPA with mono 2.4 at https://launchpad.net/~mono-testing/+archive/ppa

To install packages from a PPA, and get updates for them, follow these instructions.