PPA Issue: could not find a distribution template

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1

Hello,

I’m having an issue using PPAs, I always get:

aptsources.distro.NoDistroTemplateException: Error: could not find a distribution template for Neon/noble

I tried multiple PPAs and always get this.

Is there a solution how to fix this permanently, I have been creating source list files but it’s getting annoying to do it every single time.

2

This is an issue with PPA’s which are designed for Ubuntu not recognising the KDE Neon system’s release code name.

It is expecting a template for Neon/noble; you can try editing the OS identification.

kate /etc/os-release

Change the line:
ID=neon to ID=ubuntu.

Best solution:

As always, I don’t like things to be hidden/obfuscated with GUI tools… so I would do this:

  1. Create the source list file sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ppa-name.list (you decide the ‘PPA-name’)
  2. Add the repo lines, looking like this (assuming noble is your base Ubuntu version):
deb https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/owner/name/ubuntu noble main
deb-src https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/owner/name/ubuntu noble main
  1. Add the GPG KEY:
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys KEY_ID

You can find the key ID on the PPA’s Launchpad page.
4. Update: sudo apt update or (my preference) sudo nala update.

Install nala if you didn’t already - it’s nice and noob friendly.

WARNING:

  • KDE Neon is rolling for KDE, but uses a stable base - so you might have problems with PPA’s.

Generally, you’re better off using Snap or Flatpak to avoid conflicts.

3

Thanks, I was doing the source list files.

Wouldn’t changing the ID cause issues?

I’m using Flatpak and Snap where I can but they don’t have all the packages I need.

I installed homebrew it has most of the things I need.

Isn’t KDE neon locked to Ubuntu LTS and not a rolling release?

Only the KDE packages are updated and sometimes kernel, unlike Arch, it’s similar to Pop OS.

4

There should be no issues with neon’s identification in relation to PPAs, though it is possible that there is a problem with the /etc/os-release file.

I just added a PPA (for mkusb) this morning to test, with no issue.

Can you post the contents of your /etc/os-release and /etc/lsb-release files?

Here is my os-release:

PRETTY_NAME="KDE neon User Edition"
NAME="KDE neon"
VERSION_ID="24.04"
VERSION="User Edition"
VERSION_CODENAME=noble
ID=neon
ID_LIKE="ubuntu debian"
HOME_URL="https://neon.kde.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://neon.kde.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.kde.org/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://kde.org/privacypolicy/"
UBUNTU_CODENAME=noble
LOGO=start-here-kde-neon

The important one here for PPAs I believe is VERSION_CODENAME, not ID.
(ID can be important for some external install scripts run on third-party ubuntu derivatives that explicitly use ID as opposed to `ID_LIKE’ so temporarily editing this can still be valid in other situations)

Another possibility is a bug in the python files related to add-apt-repository, but many others would be seeing this. Such as this one from a few years ago.

I can’t for the life of me seem to find where the ‘distribution templates’ are found.

Make sure you have /usr/share/python-apt/templates/Neon.info, as well as neon.info. The first is a symlink to the lower-case one. The package neon-settings-2 provides these files.

it also doesn’t help that python errors here don’t necessarily indicate the actual source of the problem, if you can’t read python code.

2 Likes
5

I was missing the /usr/share/python-apt/templates/Neon.info file and the neon-settings-2 package.