A new software or a new version of a software is released, it is not available in repos of Ubuntu and have to wait until the next release of Ubuntu to try it. But most of the latest software releases are available as PPAs (Personal package archives) in Launchpad and it helps to Ubuntu users to install and try up-to-date versions of software.
A PPA, or Personal Package Archive, is a collection of software not included in Ubuntu by default. It might be an unreleased piece of software which is provided by the community. Therefore user should be aware of the possible risks before adding a PPA.
Here we are going consider the example of “Twisted-dev” Team, which provides PPA of the latest Twisted Development releases. (Twisted is an event-driven networking engine written in Python)
Visit the PPAs overview page in Launchpad and copy the PPA's location which is mentioned under “Adding this PPA to your system” heading. In this example PPA location is ppa:twisted-dev/ppa. You can find Twisted's PPAs overview page in here. Now, run the following command with the PPA's location.
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:twisted-dev/ppa
After running above command your sytem will fetch the PPA’s key. This will let your Ubuntu system verify that the packages in the PPA have not been interfered since they were built.
Run the following command to download the latest list of softwares form the each repos that system knows. Including the Twisted PPA.
$ sudo apt-get update
Now all sets to start installing software from the PPA. Use the regular apt-get install or synaptic to download and install it. If the added PPA is for an already installed package, run following command to upgrade it to most recent version.
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgradeEnjoy the latest version of Twisted or the software have been installed from the PPA!
