How to install a single package from Launchpad

Question

How do I download and install a proposed ubuntu package from Launchpad? I am technical but not THAT technical so if you could give me a hint it would be much appreciated.

To give you a background on this, I am affected by a very annoying issue where my menus become unresponsive (see Unity menu very slow and unresponsive), and it happens on both my main machines -terrible bug if you ask me. This issue renders Ubuntu unusable at times, and I've read on that same page that a fix might be available in the new gtk3 package (3.8.6).

many thanks

Answer 1

If you are refering to this bug:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/saucy/+source/gtk+3.0/+bug/1199877

You just have to enable proposed updates and update, you can disable them after that.

Software Center>Edit>Sources

Answer 2

To install a single package just add the PPA, update the package list and install it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:some/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install package

Done

Answer 3

The best way to install one package from ubuntu-proposed is to enable the package in Software sources. Then create the file /etc/apt/preferences with this content:

Package: *
Pin: release a=saucy-proposed
Pin-Priority: 400

To do so you may open a terminal and type sudo gedit /etc/apt/preferences. Copy any paste the contents above, save and close. This prevents all packages from the proposed source to be installed.

Then to install the package you need, just type sudo apt-get install packagename/saucy-proposed in a terminal.

Source: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed