March 30, 2022add-apt-repository Does Not Support Private PPAsWhen you are a regular user of Ubuntu, you are probably familiar with the term PPA: Personal Package Archive Interlude Ubuntu offers packages via different package repositories ( Main, Universe, Restricted, Multiverse). Whenever you enter e.g. apt install <package> the mentioned repositories are queried. Though, while Ubuntu offers many packages, not all are available via apt. Also, for a given version of Ubuntu the packages usually only get security and bug fixes, but no version updates....
July 14, 2021How to Find the Reverse Dependency of a PackageToday, there was a nice little discussion on vacdec’s GitHub project about what needs to be installed to make the barcode scanner pyzbar work on Ubuntu and MacOS. The original poster proposed to install zbar on both operating systems. zbar for Ubuntu comes with a ton of dependencies. So I had a look at my installed packages… ❯ apt list --installed | grep zbar libzbar0/bionic,now 0.10+doc-10.1build2 amd64 [installed] … which only revealed the libzbar0 library....
December 4, 2020How to Check Support Status for Installed PackagesWhen you install a package from the package repository on Ubuntu LTS, the package will be maintained for 5 years, right? No! At least, not necessarily. Basically, you need to understand that there are different repository types for Ubuntu: type maintained by canonical floss guaranteed support in years main yes yes 5 restricted yes no ? universe no yes ? multiverse no no ? (There are more than those listed (e....
July 13, 2020How to List Packages Which Can Be UpgradedHave you ever logged into your Ubuntu machine and you get greeted with xxx packages can be updated? Do you want to know which packages can be updated before running apt upgrade? This is for you (and me): apt list --upgradable