this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
157 points (81.3% liked)
Linux
48077 readers
789 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As others have mentionned downloading the .deb and running it will also work, but I feel nobody gave your a tldr of why you may want to follow those instructions instead, so here it is:
Those instructions configure your package manager (apt) with a new repository for this application.
The upside to that is that anytime you will look for updates, this app will also get updated.
It's a bit more work up front, but it can pay off when you have dozens of app updating as part of normal system operations.
Imagine a world where windows updates would also update all your software, that's what this is.
Also, no, this is not an ideal way to do this. Ideally every package you want is in your distro's repos so you'd just need to do "apt install [package]".
The reason this one isn't is because mullvad wants to make sure you use their tested, secure, and updated version and they don't want to maintain that for every distro. So they have you configure your package manager to use their repos.
This is relatively uncommon to come across in Debian. You'll normally only find it in security applications or very niche ones. The Debian repos aren't the most comprehensive but they'll contain the vast majority of common softwares.