PPA Purge Added To The Official Ubuntu 10.10 Repositories, New Version Works With Linux Mint And Other Ubuntu Derivatives

Great news for those of you who use a lot of PPAs: PPA Purge has been added to the official Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat repositories.

A quick reminder of what's PPA Purge:

PPA Purge can remove a PPA and downgrade all the packages you've installed from that PPA to the official version in the Ubuntu repositories. An example: suppose you add the c-korn/vlc PPA and install VLC 1.1.1 but you want to go back to VLC 1.0.6 which is available in the Ubuntu official repositories. Using PPA Purge, the c-korn/vlc PPA will be removed and VLC 1.1.1 will be downgraded to version 1.0.6 (there's one catch though: make sure you don't have any other PPAs with VLC 1.1.1 or 1.1.0 and so on).

Also, a new PPA Purge version has been released which adds an option to force the distribution name - this means PPA Purge will finally work with Ubuntu derivatives such as Linux Mint. To use PPA Purge for any Ubuntu derivative, use the following command:

sudo ppa-purge -d <Ubuntu version> ppa:<the PPA to purge>

Example: If you're using the latest Linux Mint 9 "Isadora" and you want to purge the c-korn/vlc PPA, you would run the following command:

sudo ppa-purge -d lucid ppa:c-korn/vlc

More on PPA Purge, HERE.

As always, the latest PPA Purge version is available in the WebUpd8 PPA (for Ubuntu Karmic and Lucid) so if you're not running Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, install it using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

Alternatively you can download the .DEB from here (ignore the version saying "Lucid" - it works on Karmic or Maverick too).

For those who prefer a GUI for this, remember that Ubuntu Tweak added a PPA Purge option in the latest version.