I just installed Kubuntu 22.04 on a Thinkpad, letting it take over (on purpose) the whole hard drive. Everything is working fine so far, all hardware seems to be working. If I take a look at software-properties, the “Other sources” list is empty: there are no ppa’s added at the moment.

On another Thinkpad I have Ubuntu 20.04 pre-installed. In the “Other sources” list I see some OEM repositories: they must have been added by the Lenovo people before shipping.

I have two questions about this:

  1. How necessary or useful are these OEM ppas? I fear that they may have important improvements for specific machines.

  2. How do you find these OEM ppas? For example, what should I do to find such a ppa for the first Thinkpad (with Kubuntu), and see if it has useful software or drivers?

Edit: just as an example, there’s this list: http://oem.archive.canonical.com/dists/ But I have no idea how to choose from there, it’s a bit of a labyrint and the names don’t reveal very much. For example, there are several “jammy-…” folders; and if you enter one of them, say “jammy”, there are many subfolders with very cryptic names.

  • DarkAngelofMusic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Personally, I tend to focus more on what software I want to install, and what version of that software would work best for me. Only after that do I consider from where to get it. As an example, when I wanted to install a PostgreSQL server instance, I considered the version I wanted, checked my distro’s main repository, and ultimately decided to install the official PostgreSQL repository.

    Short answer, I choose the repos that offer the software I want.