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Why does nobody maintain PPAs anymore?
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this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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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.