Thursday, February 21, 2013

What Does “This Package is of Bad Quality” Mean on Ubuntu

We had often seen this error message saying that this package is of bad quality when you install third-party .deb packages on Ubuntu or high quality software’s like Google Chrome and Skype. But this error is actually a false alarm. So you can go ahead and install the bad quality packages in spite of the error message shown.
This message is shown to indicate that the package files don’t comply with Debian packaging policy. So the package violates the quality standards and could cause serious problems on your computer. But this does not make an issue and you can go ahead and click the Ignore and Install button to continue.
You can see the exact error of the package by expanding the Details section. You will notice that details section says that package had error during a Lintian check. So what’s Lintian?
Ubuntu is Debian based and uses Debian packages (.deb packages). Most Debian packages don’t come with the third – party websites. They are contained in our distribution software repositotries. Ubuntu has most of the packages in its software packages right from the Debian’s software repositories. So to ensure these packages are of high and good quality Debian has a detailed packaging policy.
Lintian is an automated tool that checks Debian packages to ensure that the packages match with the Debian policy. This tool was designed for the package maintainers so that they can check their packages before uploading them. You can also run Lintian to check your entire repository to identify the problems.
The Ubuntu Software Center uses Lintian to check .deb packages before you install them. If it checks and shown the bad quality error message, it simply means that the package does not meet the guidelines.
So you can usually continue your installation by ignoring such type of error message shown by Ubuntu.

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