It has been roughly a week since I learned about the “new” repository created by Canonical to distribute certain proprietary packages.  I’m refering to the dapper-commercialrepository, which supposedly contains packages such as skype, realplayer 10, w32codecs, and opera.  I say supposedly because I haven’t tried yet.  Since I manually downloaded and installed the .deb files for my w32codecs and other needs, I didn’t feel the need to add the repository to my list.  Come to think of it, it was only after reading my good friend Thomaz Leite's blog (pt_BR) entry that I remember about it.  I did manage to take a quick peak at the repository from work but only saw opera and real player packages…

Anyhow, if you want to take advantage of this, simply add the following line into your /etc/apt/sources:

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu dapper-commercial main

… followed by:

sudo apt-get update

Now, you could install the Opera web browser for instance, using your favorite package manager.

I can’t help but feel a bit of a (personal) conflict of interests with this move.  I particularly would prefer to invest in and support open source alternatives instead…  But I know how important it is these days to be able to access media content and new tecnologies.  Canonical must know how important it is to maintain Ubuntu as an attractive alternative for people shopping for an operating system.  With this new repository, anyone will be able to install skype without having to worry if they have all appropriate dependencies or have compiled a bunch of libraries that begin with the word lib*… and this is great!  But in one hand, I can’t help but think that we’ll be sabottaging any chance the ekigas e wengos would have against the skypes out there!