Published deb-get utility, offering apt-get-like functionality for third-party packages

Published deb-get utility, offering apt-get-like functionality for third-party packages

Distributions generally allow the integration of so-called third-party repositories. these are repositories that do not come from the distribution and are therefore not protected by their keys. Opinions differ greatly as to whether such repositories should be included at all.

Third hand

But the fact of the matter is that there is a lot of useful software that the distributions don’t offer for various reasons. The problem has been alleviating somewhat for some time, as many of these applications are offered as Flatpak or AppImage, but many are still only available from the repos of the companies that created the respective application.

Not ideal

The situation in Debian is far from ideal with the pending removal of apt-key as a key handling tool. Users are unsettled by the warnings and the keys of these repositories cannot be integrated without manual intervention. A replacement tool for apt-key is currently not in sight.

A wrapper for APT, released by Martin Wimpress, main developer of the MATE desktop and former head of Canonical’s desktop division, comes in handy. Wimpress publishes tools on GitHub from time to time, which he develops more as a hobby. In this context, I reported about Ubuntu as a rolling release .

deb-get

Its latest tool is deb-get , which facilitates the installation of such third-party apps. That would not be worth mentioning on its own, because the providers of these apps usually provide the necessary lines for the source list, which you just have to copy. However, most of these guides still refer to the deprecated apt-key . This is where Wimpress Tool gains another level as it puts the keys in without any user interaction /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.daway. This is next /usr/share/keyringsthe address currently recommended by Debian. For many users this is probably an improvement and the tool already supports a fairly good range of third-party applications.

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