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So, you just had to go overboard with your PPA’s, didn’t you? The lure of bleeding-edge software was just to great for you to be able to stick with the tried-and-true software that was already available in your existing repositories.
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PPA’s: Silver Sword Or Golden Band-Aid
So, you just had to go overboard with your PPA’s, didn’t you? The lure of bleeding-edge software was just to great for you to be able to stick with the tried-and-true software that was already available in your existing repositories. Not even backports could sate your need to run with the pack.
PPA’s in Ubuntu are a great way to get software you would otherwise have to wait for. Ubuntu, which is on a 6-month release cycle, always has relatively up-to-date software for your general consumption, but when you just can’t wait for the next release, PPA’s provide a good channel for properly packaged updates. That’s not the only audience for PPA’s. A very ‘elite‘ few of us take on the challenge of using an LTS release, taking it from start to finish (3 years). In my case, I have Ubuntu 10.04 running on my laptop, which is getting up there in age and cannot handle anything newer. Though Canonical claims to support the release for 3 years– and they do– getting up-to-date software, even something as fundamental as a web-browser, can be a real challenge. Here we are, only 2 years in the release of Ubuntu 10.04 and most of the software updates that are not critical, have dried up. I still run the latest Google Chrome and many others, but not the full monty.
But you must be careful… Adding a PPA channel to your system is stupidly simple, but once you’ve done it and you’re not properly versed in Debian package management, you may have destroyed your system. In my case, I had been running the latest VLC 2.0 in Kubuntu 11.10. I got this software from a PPA channel just so that I could try out the experimental Blu-Ray support. Little did I know (well, actually, I knew what I was getting into) I would break my package manager. Full Story |
