PPAs are how people build custom packages for Ubuntu, most often to support newer versions of software over what's available in the official package list.
This is particularly helpful when working with LTS (Long Term Support) versions. I have many servers who are still 12.04. I need to install Node 0.12, but the official packages are stuck in 0.6. PPAs make this possible without having to build from source or otherwise hack your way around the system.
Typical use cases for me our to get the latest stable Nginx, PHP, HAProxy and similar popular packages without having to upgrade to a non-LTS release of Ubuntu.
This would be really interesting to see on Debian!
These types of things are already available (and I would wager much more stable than the type of thing found in PPA's) through third-party repositories like http://Dotdeb.org
Honestly I think PPA's only real-world appeal will be for desktop Debian users.
No one with any rational thought process is going to use a PPA sourced package on a server environment.
PPA support would just make it easier and safer to add repositories like http://dotdeb.org to your setup. I don't see how PPAs are any worse than manually adding entries to your sources.list file. They're almost the same thing, except the former a bit more automated.
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PPAs are how people build custom packages for Ubuntu, most often to support newer versions of software over what's available in the official package list.
This is particularly helpful when working with LTS (Long Term Support) versions. I have many servers who are still 12.04. I need to install Node 0.12, but the official packages are stuck in 0.6. PPAs make this possible without having to build from source or otherwise hack your way around the system.
Typical use cases for me our to get the latest stable Nginx, PHP, HAProxy and similar popular packages without having to upgrade to a non-LTS release of Ubuntu.
This would be really interesting to see on Debian!
These types of things are already available (and I would wager much more stable than the type of thing found in PPA's) through third-party repositories like http://Dotdeb.org
Honestly I think PPA's only real-world appeal will be for desktop Debian users.
No one with any rational thought process is going to use a PPA sourced package on a server environment.
edit: missing closing parenthesis.
PPA support would just make it easier and safer to add repositories like http://dotdeb.org to your setup. I don't see how PPAs are any worse than manually adding entries to your sources.list file. They're almost the same thing, except the former a bit more automated.
Nginx has their own non-PPA repository with latest versions, both stable and mainline.
http://nginx.org/en/linux_packages.html
The PPA is unofficial.