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So there's a bug in a certain software and i thought maybe i could look at the software code, since it's all open source, and try to fix it. Is it possible? are all software accessible by any user, and if so is it a possible to overwrite the code or is it a read-only kind of document?

Thanks for answering.

Aqua-
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2 Answers2

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You may download the source for any open source package, make any change you want, and use it on your system. Pushing your change back up to the world is more difficult.

Prepare:

sudo apt install apt-src

To find the source, first find the program you want to fix, with something like

type -p programname

Then find which package provides that file with

dpkg -S $(type -p programname)

Then get the source:

apt-src install $(dpkg -S $(type -p programname) | cut -d: -f1)

Read man dpkg;man apt-src;man cut

waltinator
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Just to add on @waltinator s answer.

If you would like to find out where a package comes from and where to find further resources you can have a look a the packages description e.g. by

apt-cache show ^package-name$

(weird characters for exact match)

mbeyss
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