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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.

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

submitted 5 months ago by christophski@feddit.uk to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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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?

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[–] Smoolak@lemmy.world 15 points 5 months ago (9 children)

Most people I know just use Arch Linux and the AUR. It seems to be the easiest system around for maximal package support and it's well maintained.

[–] christophski@feddit.uk 10 points 5 months ago (8 children)

As someone that prefers the repo method to the all-in-one package method, Arch is becoming more and more appealing

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 17 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Please keep in mind though that the reason the AUR tends to work well is because it's a very loose wrapper over source packages. Compiling from source is a very flexible process which adapts well to system changes. But at the same time it's resource-consuming (CPU time and RAM).

Most importantly, AUR is completely unsupported by any of the Arch-based distros including Arch itself. Anybody who mentions "AUR compatibility" either doesn't know what they're saying or are making a tongue-in-cheek observation about how their system happens to be coping well with a very specific selection of AUR packages that they are using at that particular moment. But there's absolutely no guarantee that your system will do well with whatever AUR packages you attempt to use, or that they'll keep working a month or a year from now.

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