I just installed Kubuntu 22.04 on a Thinkpad, letting it take over (on purpose) the whole hard drive. Everything is working fine so far, all hardware seems to be working. If I take a look at software-properties, the “Other sources” list is empty: there are no ppa’s added at the moment.

On another Thinkpad I have Ubuntu 20.04 pre-installed. In the “Other sources” list I see some OEM repositories: they must have been added by the Lenovo people before shipping.

I have two questions about this:

1. How necessary or useful are these OEM ppas? I fear that they may have important improvements for specific machines.

2. How do you find these OEM ppas? For example, what should I do to find such a ppa for the first Thinkpad (with Kubuntu), and see if it has useful software or drivers?

Edit: just as an example, there’s this list: http://oem.archive.canonical.com/dists/ But I have no idea how to choose from there, it’s a bit of a labyrint and the names don’t reveal very much. For example, there are several “jammy-…” folders; and if you enter one of them, say “jammy”, there are many subfolders with very cryptic names.