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There is one use case for
 PPAs that may be compelling, specifically, for a server 
platform that standard repositories aren't able to handle as well, and that is software 
versioning. As I mentioned earlier, a major server component such as PHP or MySQL 
may be locked to a specific major version with each Ubuntu Server release. What do 
you do if you need to use Ubuntu Server, but the application you need to run is not 
available in the version your organization requires? In the past, you would literally 
need to choose between the distribution and the package, with some organizations 
even using a different distribution of Linux just to satisfy the need to have a specific 
application at a specific version. You can always compile the application from source 
(assuming its source code is available), but that can cause additional headaches in 
the sense that you'd be responsible for compiling new security patches yourself 
whenever they're made available. PPAs potentially give you access to applications 
not normally available in the default repositories, and/or access to newer versions of 
packages than what is normally provided. This gives you, the server administrator, 
the ability to choose the approach that is best for your goal.
PPAs are generally added to your server with the 
apt-add-repository
 command. 
The syntax generally uses the 
apt-add-repository
 command, with a colon, followed 
by a username, and then the PPA name. The following command is a hypothetical 
example:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:username/myawesomesoftware-1.0
To begin the process, you would start your search by visiting Ubuntu's PPA website, 
which is available at 
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas
. There, you can search 
among the PPAs available.
Once you find a PPA you
 would like to add to your server, you can add it simply 
by finding the name of the PPA and then adding it to your server with the 
apt-
add-repository
 command. You should take a look at the page for the PPA, though, 
in case there are different instructions. For the most part, the 
apt-add-repository
 
command should work fine for you. Each PPA typically has a set 
of instructions 
attached, so there shouldn't be any guesswork required here.
Before adding a PPA to your server, it's best to first research 
whether or not it's being maintained well. For example, if the PPA 
hasn't had any updated packages in a very long time, that's cause 
for concern—security fixes are fairly common with most packages. 
If a package isn't being regularly updated and has therefore gone 
"stale," it may be best to avoid it as it may cause more harm than 
good.

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Chapter 3