One of the great things about Debian and Ubuntu is that you have a ton of great open source software at your fingertips via the package repositories for those distros. However, if you want to run popular packages like VMware Server or Opera, it gets a little tricker. Scott Granneman explains the ins and outs of extra repositories.
One of the great things about Debian and Ubuntu is that you have a ton of great open source software at your fingertips via the package repositories for those distros. However, if you want to run popular packages like VMware Server or Opera, it gets a little tricker.
A warning up front: this particular column is for folks who use Debian or Debian-based distros, especially Ubuntu and its derivatives. Also, you should already know how to use Advanced Package Tool (APT) and how to edit a sources.list file. Aren’t sure? Brush up at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Packaging_Tool.
The sources.list that comes with your distro is probably fine for most people, but if you’re more adventurous, or if you want to make it easy to install and manage third-party software packages, you need to add other repositories to your sources.list. Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting choices out there. However, all the usual caveats about conflicts apply here, so make sure you know what you’re doing before you start adding repos willy-nilly.
Opera
Firefox is an awesome Web browser, but Opera is pretty amazing in its own right, even if it’s not open source. If you’d like to check out the other cool non- Internet Explorer alternative, add one of the following to sources.list, depending upon your tolerance for beta software (the commented line is always helpful later, so it’s a good idea to add it):
