Search, locate and get relevant install details about PPAs via PPA Software Center

Usually, users, when installing software, take a double-sided road, in the sense of installing software from Ubuntu Software Center and from PPAs, from USC installing software considered more stable and from PPAs software considered more up-to-date (yet sometimes bearing extra issues, especially when the PPAs are labeled as daily builds, unstable, testing, etc).

Installing apps from PPAs is usually performed by either copy & pasting commands into a terminal (commands discovered on blogs, wikis, forums, etc) and/or by searching through launchpad.

PPA Software Center is a handy utility designed at easing one's approach to PPAs, by providing a fast accurate manner of directly searching PPAs from launchpad.

Launching PPA Software Center, presents the user a simplistic view with a search area, typing a word in the search area and clicking Find, searches and displays the matched items in its PPA view.

The matched items are displayed with package name (the name of the application), version (with full name, such as 1.6.0-precise), PPA (the name of the PPA), etc.

A definitely interesting aspect of PPA Software Center is its automatic package state detection, meaning, typing everpad in the search area, exposes the matched packages, furthermore displaying Not present under PPA status (meaning, the matched PPA is not currently added) and Not present (a specific app version is not currently installed on the computer), Major (the app is currently installed on the computer, yet featuring a more up-to-date bigger version number, like for instance, the exposed app is version 1.0 and the already installed on the machine app is 2.0), Minor (the app is currently installed, yet featuring an older version as compared to the PPASC's exposed version) under Local version.

In order to both locate and install an application, type its name in the search area and double-click on the preferred displayed result, latter action that opens the package via a filled-with-details view, featuring at its bottom the required install commands.

Consequently, in order to install Unity Calendar lens, open PPA Software Center, type unity-calendar-lens in the search area, double-click on the result and navigate to it bottom, action followed by copying the To install this package run's sudo add-apt-repository ppa:markjtully/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install unity-calendar-lens and pasting it into a terminal (to copy the command, in order to paste it, click the bottom-right Copy to clipboard button).

PPA Url allows the user to 1-click away navigate to the PPA's launchpad page, clicking the link, opens it via the default web-browser.

PPA Software Center is available for free via Ubuntu Software Center.

Worth mentioning
PPA Software Center has been created as part of Ubuntu App Showdown.