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I'm confused about PPAs and setting up a mirror infrastructure. What mirror infrastructure? What key signing is involved in a mirror that is not involved in sig
by dfc 14y ago
I'm confused about PPAs and setting up a mirror infrastructure. What mirror infrastructure? What key signing is involved in a mirror that is not involved in signing packages for a PPA?
Ubuntu's additions are nice. But they are minor improvements to apt/dpkg. Without them apt and dpkg would still be phenomenal.
- mcpherrinm 14y agoI administer a small number of systems and deploy custom packages to all of those. Running a custom mirror, signing packages, managing keyrings on the mirror, and getting them on all systems is nontrivially harder than using a PPA and associated scripts. Now, I run a mix of Ubuntu and Debian systems. I don't use PPAs that much, but when I do they're just plain easier. Yes, it's an incremental gain, but that's a gain. It makes them better. They weren't first, but they're innovating. Sometimes, the "innovations" aren't fantastic especially some of the more harebrained stuff on desktop (PulseAudio, avahi). But no longer is Ubuntu just a Debian rip-off: They're producing new and useful additions. The relative merits are debatable, and so I'm not going to continue that thread. In the end, it boils down to X + epsilon > X, for any epsilon > 0.