Linux

48229 readers

871 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

137

Why does nobody maintain PPAs anymore? (feddit.uk)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

75 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When I first started using Linux 15 years ago (Ubuntu) , if there was some software you wanted that wasn't in the distro's repos you can probably bet that there was a PPA you could add to your system in order to get it.

Seems that nowadays this is basically dead. Some people provide appimage, snap or flatpak but these don't integrate well into the system at all and don't integrate with the system updater.

I use Spek for audio analysis and yesterday it told me I didn't have permission to read a file, I a directory that I owned, that I definitely have permission to read. Took me ages to realise it was because Spek was a snap.

I get that these new package formats provide all the dependencies an app needs, but PPAs felt more centralised and integrated in terms of system updates and the system itself. Have they just fallen out of favour?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

On the contrary AUR seems to have a lot more binary packages than source packages in my experience. Tons of package also have a "-bin" version (e.g. yay).

Your "unsupported" comment is a bit weird. It's the AUR user community that supports Arch and makes AUR compatible with it. I don't know why somebody would contemplate the other way around. I mean, it's the while philosophy of the AUR.

I've been using it for the past 12 years and I rarely got any issues with it. I think you fear mongering quite a bit. Sure, you get over some abandoned packages from time to time and once in a blue moon you get a dependency that doesn't install properly. When that happen you post a comment on the AUR or flag the package and it's solved in a matter of days most of the time. It's surprising that such a system would work so well, but it does.