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Debian Gets Its Own PPA-Like System as Debusine Repositories Launch (linuxiac.com)
submitted 2 days ago by cm0002@no.lastname.nz to c/linux@programming.dev
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Debian developers now have an official way to publish and test add-on package repositories, as the Debusine project has opened its repository feature in public beta.

The new service, available at debusine.debian.net, allows Debian Developers and Debian Maintainers to create APT-compatible repositories that function similarly to the well-known Ubuntu’s PPAs but are built specifically for the Debian ecosystem.

Debusine itself is a relatively new project within Debian’s infrastructure. It was introduced publicly at DebConf and has been developed to modernize and unify Debian’s internal workflows for package building, testing, and quality assurance. Until now, much of this work has taken place behind the scenes. With the launch of repositories in beta, Debusine is becoming directly usable for day-to-day development tasks.

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[-] who@feddit.org 12 points 2 days ago

You already posted copypasta about this, two days ago, and it's still false.

Only Debian developers and Debian maintainers can create a Debusine repository. That’s not “PPA-like” in any practical way. The value of Personal Package Archives (PPAs) is that anyone can create them.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 11 hours ago

PPAs tend to be really dangerous

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 11 hours ago

PPAs are a massive failure and have been used to spread malware

Allowing just anyone to create a repo is dangerous

[-] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

Not really? From this page, all it looks like you need is a salsa.debian.org account. They call this being a "Debian developer", but registration on Debian Salsa is open to anybody, and you can just sign up.

Once you have an account, you can use Debian's Debusine normally. I don't really see how this is any different from being required to create an Ubuntu/Launchpad account for a PPA. This is really just pedantic terminology, Debian considers anybody who contributes to their distro in any way to be a "Debian Developer", whereas Ubuntu doesn't.

If you don't want to create an account, you can self host debusine — except it looks like you can't self host the server that powers PPA's. I consider this to be a win for Debusine.

[-] who@feddit.org 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

According to the Debian Wiki, merely having a salsa account is not sufficient.

When you login on debusine.debian.net with Salsa for the first time, if you are a Debian developer or a Debian maintainer, then a Debusine account is automatically created. The username of that account is your primary email on salsa.debian.org.

To verify if you are a Debian developer, it relies on the group membership exported by Salsa: if you are part of the debian group on salsa, then the account is created and it is added to the Debian group on debusine.debian.net.

To verify if you are a Debian maintainer, it will query nm.debian.org to know if that salsa identity is known to be a Debian Maintainer. If yes, then the account is created and it is added to the Maintainers group.

Edit, to address the last line in your comment:

The value of Ubuntu's PPA service is it gives anyone a managed and hosted repository and a multi-architecture build farm, for free, so you don't have to self-host. Self-hosting Debusine would not be comparable.

If a self-hosted Debian repository is all you want, that has been possible forever, using any of a variety of tools.

[-] jasory@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

Debían developer is a specific position that you apply for. Anyone can be a maintainer. Well, I had to get approved but I don't know the qualifications, I already had code in Debían vía GNOME.

[-] cm0002@no.lastname.nz 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Well ig I did post a Phoronix article on it a few days ago, but in any case these aren't "copypasta" these are reputable outlets publishing this, I just copy the first couple paragraphs of the article for posting.

So, if you have a problem with how these reputable linux news outlets are publishing it, you'll have to take it up with them. I'm not personally writing these articles lmfao

[-] who@feddit.org 5 points 2 days ago

By copypasta, I meant that you are bulk copying posts from other communities.

And apparently with no regard for the veracity of what you're re-posting.

[-] cm0002@no.lastname.nz 1 points 2 days ago

Oh, you're referring to the crossposting from .ml comms because of their authoritarian ideology (see below)

That doesn't apply here though, nearly all of the linux content I post is sourced and posted independently

Why am I cross-posting .ml content?

I cross-post from .ml to the nearest relevant non-.ml comm to reduce the influence of .ml comms and indirectly, the instance as a whole, to make it an easier decision for other instance admins to defederate because one key reason I identified that admins don't want to defederate is because .ml still has some very large comms and some niche comms.

Megathread on the issue

Some highlights from the link:

"Don't worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/30580167

"See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn't count!!" ~ Davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/30673342

.ml admin, Nutomics continued transphobia https://lemmy.world/post/29222558 The original transphobic Comment from Nutomic: https://lemmy.world/post/18236068

"NK is actually good and anything counter to that is Western propaganda!" ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/31595035

General negative sentiment to other instances who haven't "seen the way" yet ~davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/27426510

"If you don't support Russia then you just don't understand geopolitics" ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/27352415

And so so much documentation on clear heavy handed censorship and bias also on the link. So much I can't even put them all here because this comment would be really long.

I believe the behavior of its admins (the main admins are Lemmy devs) does harm to the overall growth of the Lemmy-verse and maybe even the Thrediverse (since Lemmy kinda kicked off the Thrediverse) because of its association with the devs of Lemmy and their insistence to use .ml as their personal political platform to spread harmful propaganda

On the outside, bringing up Lemmy frequently leads to comments like "Lemmy? Isn't that the place with a bunch of tankies?" Or "Tried Lemmy, but found it full of pro Russia crap so I left". The best way forward from that I see is to either widely defederate from .ml like the rest of the Triad, or pressure them to put a fair and unbiased as possible admin team.

[-] MashedTech@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Yo, I remember a post about you getting mass banned

[-] cm0002@no.lastname.nz 3 points 1 day ago

Lol you shouldn't believe random posts, I haven't been banned from any instances except .ml, for obvious reasons

this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
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