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?
Probably because PPAs only work on Ubuntu and there are more Linux distros and even then it meant having to build and test a package for a couple of different Ubuntu versions.
Also, Ubuntu is moving towards using snaps for everything so they’re pretty much the successor to PPAs.
Until they drop it for flatpak as they did all NIH-driven products.
I doubt they will. Anyway I think they have experienced a massive community brain drain at this point. People packed up there files and left.
Acting I thought they dropped snap in favor of fkatpak finally.
PPAs work for all Debian based distros, no?
Theoretically they can, in practice it’s less than ideal. And that doesn’t solve all the other distros or the combinatory explosion of supporting several distros and versions.
Flatpaks on the other hand give you a single runtime of your choice to worry about (though they still have lots of cons too).
Oh I’m not defending PPAs at all, I’m glad we’ve moved past them, I just thought it was a Debian tech that got boosted by Ubuntu. I see I was in error. Thanks for clarifying!
Debian focuses on stability. They tell you not to add any extra repos ever as it introduces untested software.
Encouraging something and disabling something are two different things. They have Flatpak in stable, which is untested software. That’s not why they didn’t use PPAs.
And Ubuntu derivates like Mint and many others, that’s actually a big market in Ubuntu terms
But you have no way of knowing if a PPA will break Mint, Ubuntu or what ever else.
A ppa is a repo. It’s Ubuntu stuff, and there’s no reason to work your ass off for Ubuntu for free. They’ll just shit on you and claim that snaps are great (they’re not)
They probably want you to package your app as a snap. Oh snap!
Yeah I was referring to repos generally but I come from Ubuntu so PPA is the term I used incorrectly
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PPAs are a nice idea but a terrible design. They work well as long as they are kept up to date and they don’t overwrite distro packages. But in practice as you’ve noticed they tend to be abandoned after a while, and they don’t respect the rule to not supersede original packages. Together these two faults lead to terrible consequences, as time passes they corrupt your Debian/Ubuntu dependencies and lead to unsolvable situations. Basically your system reaches a dead-end where it cannot upgrade anymore (or only partially, which makes things even worse).
Aptitude has a very smart and determinate dependecy solver that can recover a system from this kind of situation but it usually involves uprooting most of it by removing and reinstalling a huge amount of packages, some of which are essential. It takes a long time, if anything goes wrong you’re screwed, and you may end up with older packages than what you had installed, which may cause your user data for those apps to not be understood anymore, leading to malfunctions or crashes. So yeah it can be done but at that point you might as well do a clean reinstall.
This caused me PTSD going back 20 years.
Flatpak exists.
This seems as good a place as any to point out that I just perpetually have problems with flatpaks and snaps. Appimages less so but I wish they were better integrated.
Yes I understand why devs like these new packages. Yes I think that in the future they will be great. Yes they probably work fine for everyone else. I personally dislike them.
It really depends on what you are using them for. I would avoid Snap as it is a mess but flatpaks are fairly similar to regular apps. The big difference is that the app configs are in home/var/local and Flatpaks use sandboxing.
Because we have Flatpak. Also everyone kind of dislikes Ubuntu now especially the more technical users who historically maintaining the PPAs
Because it’s outdated. They are a lot of work and can cause package conflicts or errors, making the whole system less reliable.
If you need something, that’s not in your package manager, then use Distrobox and create an Arch container, and use the AUR for example.
You can export the program after installing, and it integrates better into your system.By doing that, the devs have to do the work only once and you will have less problems.
The devs only do the work once, it’s the packagers that deal with mutability.
I used to crash my Debian and eventual Ubuntu distros with regularity due to outdated PPAs. It was such a headache, and it’s why I still put my /home directory on a seperate partition just to make a reinstall safe for my personal files. I thought I didn’t like Appimages and their bloat until Snap came along. I hated Snap so much it convinced me switch distro’s again. Now I’m on Pop! and I love Flatpaks by comparison and now think Appimages are alright…
It’s 10+ years later and I still irrationally worry about crashing my system due to outdated & conflicting source dependencies. In hindsight the problems with PPAs clearly had a lasting impact on me.
The don’t break Debian page specifically tells you not to add extra repos.
whenever somebody brings up some terribly ancient Debian/buntu distro with outdated packages we end up having them use a .deb instead since the ppa is long gone and it’s been fine. wild that they’re often stuck on 4 year old packages though
They were a bandaid solution to a problem that Flatpaks and Snap fixed.
Just Flatpak. Snaps just made everything terribly complex
While they aren’t perfect, it’s certainly better than waiting on the distro or dealing with potential package conflicts that PPAs also had a habit of causing.
To answer this question, you need to look at the fact we live in a capitalist society.
What does that mean? It means that at every turn people are trying to make money.
How is that relevant to Linux? Well it’s two prong. First you need to look at the fact that the people at Canonical has Microsoft envy and so want to make money. Secondly, you have to look at the fact that the people Ubuntu have Microsoft envy and so designed their walled garden in a manner that uses Microsoft as inspiration.
Okay…? So if you’re building a walled garden and the smarter people have no desire for the disk space bloat that said walled garden comes at a cost of, how do you get them to move over other than making the sane, superior and slegacy (shush, I wanted the alliteration) way untenable.
So what am I saying? It’s all about shitty walled gardens and inferior software design, coupled with a lack of resources to maintain applications.
I don’t get the down-votes, Canonical does want to become a walled garden. Money talks.
But is this comment really an answer to this question or just a rant about Canonical?
Both, really, PPAs are an Ubuntu thing and Ubuntu’s moving towards becoming a walled garden, which includes snap.
Because they only work on one distro/package manager.
Distributing software is simply transitioning to work in a distro-agnostic way. It’s only a matter of time until distros start updating flatpaks along with system packages. Many already do.
And some apps distributed as appimages self-update. (RPCS3 for example)
Not to mention that Ubuntu itself has basically ditched apt for snap.
PPA’s are the reason why I stopped using Debian-based distros about 8 years ago.
For me, those have been the primary source of pain and anger. Back then, almost every dude had a PPA. Keeping track was hard. Not only that, but often those were full of other unrelated software or libs. The outcome was broken systems left and right.
PPAs are not for debian-based, they are Ubuntu-only.
Distributing software is simply transitioning to work in a distro-agnostic way. It’s only a matter of time until distros start updating flatpaks along with system packages. Many already do.
I guess Canonical being money-driven would be wanting to cut costs so reducing packagers is a viable way. So what if many packages ship the same lib? It’s all isolated and drive space is not an issue, right?
I think packaging is being already automated a lot today’s
It is, but snap helps Canonical become the walled garden it wants to be, so let’s bitch about how troublesome it is to do packages for all architectures omg what a downer…
the only person i’d trust for ppas is ondřej surý
He almost had a key expiring.
They are Ubuntu only and need to be kept uptodate to Ubuntu.
When I was using Debian I found I could generally get the latest version of software I wanted from Nix if it wasn’t in the main Debian repos, or was outdated. Nix works quite well on any Linux distro - it doesn’t interfere with the rest of the system.
