Repository raspberrypi.collabora.com seems to have gone away, what is/was it for?

Question

Yesterday I tried to upgrade one of my Pis from Raspbian 7 (JessieWheezy) to Raspbian 8 (WheezyJessie) and finally to Raspbian 9 (Stretch). (The upgrade to Buster won’t happen until I get a bigger SD card.)

sudo apt-get update gave me the following error:

Something wicked happened resolving 'raspberrypi.collabora.com:http' (-5 - No address associated with hostname)

APT would not pull any updates because of this error. All other repos were reachable, which pretty much rules out any network/DNS problems on my end as the cause. Also, https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/raspberrypi.collabora.com reports the site as down—which looks like the repo has gone away.

Looking at my package sources, I noticed that this was only one of several repos. Disabling raspberrypi.collabora.com allowed me to do all the upgrades I needed, and the system seems to work.

When I compare this system with another Pi which I set up with Stretch from the start, I notice the Stretch system does not have this repo (although the host names for the other package sources differ as well).

Questions:

• What is/was the raspberrypi.collabora.com repository for?
• Will disabling it cut off some packages from updates, or do the other repos now provide these packages?
• What is the correct way of migrating away from it (i.e. without leaving behind any non-upgradeable packages)?

Answer 1

This is what it was for according to their website at https://www.collabora.com/about-us/our-work.html

They might have provided a browser or driver's according to my quick read

Edit:

They created the desktop environment after a tiny bit more reading of their webpage

Answer 2

As others have indicated, raspberrypi.collabora.com held a web browser and desktop environment which eventually got abandoned (the web browser was replaced with Chromium).

If you never knowingly installed anything from that suite, you shouldn’t experience any negative consequences. In a non-GUI setup, you are unlikely to have installed anything from that repo and probably won’t experience any negative side effects from getting rid of it. If you indeed installed anything from the Collabora suite, these packages will not get any more updates (they won’t anyway, since the project seems to have been abandoned and the servers are down).

As for the correct way of migrating, some have indicated that switching repos and upgrading is not recommended. On the other hand, APT has some release upgrade functionality, and Ubuntu (as a Debian-based distro) even has a do-release-upgrade script written around APT. However, I haven’t dug into the details of how these things work. Decide what is easier for you – install new windows in your house, or tear it down and build a new house from scratch with new windows.