Ubuntu – the “Install this third-party software” box in the installer and what third-party software is installed

software installationubiquity

When installing Ubuntu it always has this box which says Install this third-party software, but I am wondering exactly which third-party software and where it is installing it from.

I can see the description below, however I want to know exactly which software is being installed, which packages, and from where.

Ubuntu GNOME uses third-party software to play Flash, MP3 and other media, and to work with some graphics and wi-fi hardware. Some of this software is proprietary. The software is subject to license terms included with its documentation.

Install this third-party software check box

Best Answer

Edit

After digging some more through output of

dpkg --get-selections | xargs apt-cache policy | grep -B5 'multiverse' it turns out there exists meta-package ubuntu-restricted-addons. The /var/lib/dpkg/info/ubuntu-restricted-addons.list pointed me to the file /usr/share/doc/ubuntu-restricted-addons/README.Debian

The contents of that file state:

This package was split into ubuntu-restricted-extras and ubuntu-restricted-addons to allow the desktop CD installer (ubiquity) to install a subset of the packages available in the original ubuntu-restricted-extras package.

Moving forward, ubuntu-restricted-extras should only contain multiverse packages, whereas ubuntu-restricted-addons should contain main and universe packages, as well as any packages from multiverse that have been vetted by a lawyer.

Since ubuntu-restricted-extras depends on ubuntu-restricted-addons, users should be discouraged from installing ubuntu-restricted-addons outside of the desktop CD installer. This is the reasoning behind the warning and sparse description in ubuntu-restricted-addons.

-- Evan Dandrea Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:14:43 -0400

Thus, Ubuntu installer allows you to install ubuntu-restricted-addons meta-package.

apt-cache tells us what goes into that package:

xieerqi:
$ apt-cache depends ubuntu-restricted-addons                                                                            
ubuntu-restricted-addons
  Recommends: gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
  Recommends: gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly
  Recommends: flashplugin-installer
    flashplugin-installer:i386
  Recommends: gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
  Recommends: gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad
  Recommends: gstreamer1.0-libav
  Recommends: gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
  Recommends: gstreamer1.0-fluendo-mp3
  Recommends: chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
  Recommends: oxideqt-codecs-extra
  Conflicts: ubuntu-restricted-addons:i386

This is pretty much the same output as on my 15.10 virtual machine.

Thus , my conclusion is that ubuntu-restricted-addons from multiverse repository is where the third-party software comes from.

Original post In terms of /etc/apt/sources.list file those would be any software that comes from deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $RELEASE multiverse as well as deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $RELEASE restricted repository.

It's also references in the software-properties-gtk program

enter image description here

You can list packages in those repositories with 

awk '/^Package/' /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_$(lsb_release -c | awk '{print $2}' )_multiverse_binary-$(dpkg --print-architecture)_Packages

and

awk '/^Package/' /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_$(lsb_release -c | awk '{print $2}' )_restricted_binary-$(dpkg --print-architecture)_Packages
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