Ubuntu plans to close the Canonical Partner repository ahead of the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS release in April.
Now, my psychic powers aren’t as sharp as they used to be but I can sense that most of you are staring at this page struggling to recall what this is —oh, and someone with a H in their name is reading this post in their underwear. Go put trousers on dude, honestly…
I’ll save you scraping the back of your minds: the Canonical Partner repo is where software vendors could provide proprietary apps for easy install by Ubuntu users. Skype, for instance, used to be an apt-get away thanks to this repo.
Thing is, the partner archive has been empty since Ubuntu 20.10. Adobe Flash (now end-of-life) is the only thing the repo houses for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and that won’t be available in 22.04 LTS.
Which means this repo is just sat there, gathering dust.
In a mailing list post to signpost the change Ubuntu dev Steve Langasek argues that the “…Snap Store has matured to the point that I believe it supersedes the partner archive, and we should remove this no-longer-used archive from Ubuntu systems going forward, pruning the cruft”.
Which is a fair point.
Ditching the defunct depo makes our collective sources lists two lines leaner 💪!
Steve says Canonical don’t have any concerns with the closing, and given the vacant nature he expects few objections from the wider Ubuntu community.