changing a ppa from dev to stable safely

Question

ubuntu comes with firefox (stable) built-in. I wanted to try Aurora, so I added ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/firefox-aurora to the source list and upgraded this way :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/firefox-aurora
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

now let us suppose that I want to go back to the stable version of firefox, what would be the safest way to do so ?

thank you.

Edit :

As pointed out by @vasa1, I am not talking specifically about firefox, but about the concept of going back to a lesser version in general. I have google-chrome installed so I guess, Ubuntu will one end up browserless.

Problem solved using @IgnitE's solution.

A similar, but not identical, question was closed as too localized. — , Mar 03 '13 at 02:53
Actually my question is not really specific to firefox, but to the concept of going back to a lesser version safely. — Abderrahmane TAHRI JOUTI, Mar 03 '13 at 11:37
But do let us know how you managed to get back to Firefox stable! — , Mar 03 '13 at 11:40
The problem was solved using @IgnitE's solution. the ppa-purge downgraded firefox automatically. but thank you for your detailed info on www-browser — Abderrahmane TAHRI JOUTI, Mar 03 '13 at 12:46

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 02 '13 at 21:43

You can use ppa-purge to remove a ppa. Just do:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/firefox-aurora

Description from man page:

ppa-purge - disables a PPA and reverts to official packages.
This script provides a bash shell script capable of automatically downgrading all packages in a given PPA back to the ubuntu versions.

(You can install ppa-purge by sudo apt-get install ppa-purge).

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

I'm restricting my answer to the Firefox aspect of the question.

While a plain installation of Ubuntu comes with Firefox pre-installed, OP seems to have replaced that with Aurora (a development version of Firefox) by means of a PPA.

It isn't clear now whether OP has some other browser installed as well. This point may be significant because Ubuntu needs to have a browser present at all times: see Why does removing Firefox install another browser? and Can I uninstall & replace Firefox with another browser of my choice?.

In view of the requirement for a www-browser, OP maybe better off first checking out the software installed on the system using dpkg --get-selections. If there's an acceptable alternative to Firefox present, purging the Aurora PPA shouldn't pose a problem. The purge step can then be followed by a simple sudo apt-get install firefox.

However, if Aurora is the only browser present, I'm not sure that purging the PPA first will be successful. OP would need to study the output from apt-get at this point.

Apologies for posting this as an answer in case it's deemed to be irrelevant.

I have google-chrome installed so i guess it would not be a problem. — Abderrahmane TAHRI JOUTI, Mar 03 '13 at 11:42

changing a ppa from dev to stable safely

2 Answers2