Extra Apt repositories in Ubuntu

Ubuntu contains thousands of packages in standard repositories, but some useful software is not included, usually for licensing reason. It's convenient to install other apps the same way you use for Ubuntu - with Synaptic, aptitude or whatever your favourite package manager is. That's when extra repositories are useful.

Using extra repository requires two things:

- adding a repository URL to apt's configuration - by convention, each repository gets it's own file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d

- adding a package signing key, so APT won't complain about untrusted source.

You can use GUI or command line for that, I prefer the latter. See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu for instructions on using GUI.

Be warned that unofficial repositories are not supported by Ubuntu and may contain lower quality software. Although the ones below usually don't. Here are the repos I add on my machines.

MediBuntu

The single most useful repo. It contains multimedia codecs that didn't make it to official system due to licensing. Other software includes Skype and Google Earth.

echo "deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ karmic free non-free" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring

The last line will warn you unverified package.

GetDeb

Large collection of various packages. Highlights: Flock browser, Cinepaint movie editor, Ubuntu Tweak.

wget -q -O- http://archive.getdeb.net/getdeb-archive.key | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb http://archive.getdeb.net/ubuntu karmic-getdeb apps" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/getdeb.list

Tip: if you installed Flock, you might want to use Firefox plugins (not extensions - plugins are Flash Player, Java, Adobe Reader etc.) in it. Just use this two lines:

cd /usr/share/flock/plugins
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/* .

VirtualBox

My choice for desktop virtual machine.

wget -q -O- http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc  | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian karmic non-free" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.list

What's next?

After adding repositories, update your package list:

sudo apt-get update

Then you can view the new packages in Synaptic or aptitude. I always start with:

sudo aptitude install ubuntu-restricted-extras

It gives you codecs, Java plugin, Flash player and MS fonts, all with one command.