This entry was written with the developer in mind. Though none of this information is developer-specific, I don’t know of any non-developers who like to go through source code. I do look forward to the day where everyone reads code for the love of it.

Why use free open source software? There are many reasons why you should use it, a lot of which have been covered all over the internet ad nauseum, for instance Why Open Source Software by David A. Wheeler. I am sure they are all great references as to why anyone should consider free and open source software (FOSS) as a software solution. I am here to talk about why I think you should use FOSS and for me, one of the most important reasons to use FOSS is to give you the ability to figure out why things are going wrong on your computer.

While was looking into what source.list.d directory was about, I stumbled across this thread regarding sources.list.d. It didn’t really cover anything that I was looking for, though it did finally put into words why I love open source software. The question was asked as to why the source list files were not being picked up from within that directory. No one gave him a real answer. So the original poster decided to answer the question for himself by looking at the apt source code.

Ok I solved the problem after looking at apt source. Files in the sources.list.d should end with .list. I changed and it works

And like that, everything just made sense to me. As developers, we really don’t need to ask many questions. Worse comes to worse, we can always dive into the code and answer the questions for ourselves. That may not always be the most efficient way to go about getting an answer, but I really haven’t met a dedicated developer who does not like diving into code for themselves.