In Software Sources under the Other Software tab, there is an option of enabling "Canonical Partners" repository: software packaged by Canonical for their partners. Should I check "Source Code" as well? What does that mean when that's checked?
Ubuntu – Software & Updates; should I turn on Canonical Partners source? Source code
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Ubuntu attempts to select a local mirror of the repositories that are geographically close to you. The partner repo doesn't have any mirrors because of copyright issues (AFAIK -- it's non-free software) so you end up using the London-hosted copy. PPAs are probably the same.
As you're in the Caribbean, I imagine traffic UK-bound would have to hop through the US before going trans-Atlantic to London. That's a long way for something to travel and if any of the links are bad or lossy, traffic can grind to a slow speed. At the least, response time is very slow.
If you want to test this further you can run ping archive.canonical.com and see what you get for a response time (I'm in England and get ~26ms). And as a general speedtest to London, you can run wget http://london1.linode.com/100MB-london.bin (1.3MB/s here).
As for fixing the problem... Canonical either need more, geographically-distrubuted servers for the partner repo, or you need to move closer to London.
Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) then run:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
Replace all the text with this:
# See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to
# newer versions of the distribution.
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty main restricted
# deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty main restricted
## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
## distribution.
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates main restricted
# deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates main restricted
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any
## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty universe
# deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates universe
# deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates universe
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu
## security team.
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty multiverse
# deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates multiverse
# deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates multiverse
## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as
## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes
## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.
## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review
## or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
# deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security main restricted
# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security universe
# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security multiverse
# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security multiverse
## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's
## 'partner' repository.
## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the
## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users.
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu trusty partner
# deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu trusty partner
## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party
## developers who want to ship their latest software.
deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty main
# deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty main
Save, close gedit, then run:
sudo apt-get update
Best Answer
The Canonical Partner repository contains closed source third party software that don't cost any money. Canonical doesn't have access to the source code, they just package and test it and may provide feedback and help to the author if there are issues.
For the sources, you can leave them unticked if you don't plan to do anything with the source code of software in the repositories.