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?

  • MentalEdge
    132·
    7 months ago

    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.

    • nelov@feddit.de
      103·
      7 months ago

      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.

    • 0x0@programming.dev
      41·
      7 months ago

      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?

        • 0x0@programming.dev
          2·
          7 months ago

          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…