The majority of other distros value package managers that allow for complex graph evaluation of dependencies, and the ability to roll back. This is granted with rpm and Deb, but not for pkgsource, which is a pretty lightweight format compared to those.
As for AUR, the major distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora) support 3p repositories as well. The main concern is security. IIRC one of major complaints for AUR in the past was that it didn’t foresee a strongly secure distribution system.
Asbestos undies on.
I don’t think AUR is a feature, but more of a hazard indicator. If the distributor isn’t packaging so many important things that most users have to turn to external services regularly, they’re lying down on the job.
Well that would apply to any distro I’ve used… they’re all going to have things that aren’t in the main repos. It’s a feature for Arch in that on nearly every other distro it’s probably going to be more of a pain to install them.
For my use cases I’ve had better luck finding the packages I need in the arch repos, than e.g. ubuntu or fedora repos. IMO arch is not worse than the ubuntus and fedoras for package availability in the main repos.
Though for me AUR is not the reason I use arch (I use it for rolling release, and up to date packages), I think AUR is better than e.g. PPAs on ubuntu. I think it’s a better experience installing e.g. visual studio code with an AUR helper, than to copy some random command off a website to set up the PPA and install it.
when it’s the main reason why so many people use Arch Linux?
AUR is one reason why I use Arch. But not the reason. Besides AUR, Arch has many other advantages from my point of view. Like for example the wiki that also users of other distributions use. Or the many vanilla packages. Or that you can easily create your own packages through the PKGBUILD files. Or that, based on my own experience, Arch is quite problem-free to use despite the current packages.
One reason why other distributions don’t have something like AUR could be that AUR is not an official offering, so no verification is done in advance either. Thus, it has happened at least once that someone has manipulated PKGBUILD files in bad faith (https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/aur-general/2018-July/034151.html). The Wiki does not warn against the use for nothing.
However, it is much easier for the user to check the files in the AUR in advance than it is, for example, with ready-made packages in an unofficial PPA.
With https://build.opensuse.org and https://mpr.makedeb.org there are also at least two offers that are somewhat similar to AUR.
Arch has many other advantages from my point of view. Like for example the wiki that also users of other distributions use.
I remember when started using #! and then Debian with Openbox. It didn’t matter what problem I had, the answer and solution were always in the Arch Wiki.
Now I am full Arch user.
What makes you think there aren’t equivalents out there?
Gentoo’s Guru repository, for one, and any of the multitude of ebuild repositories available through the
eselect repositorycommand.The AUR is not particularly special.
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That sounds suspiciously like some shifting goalposts.
And the AUR is not as extensive as the Nix Store.
AUR is definitely not the reason people choose arch haha
Fellow Linux folks, this direction is one of the main problems and you know it very darn well.
Nah, it is my MAIN reason using Arch-based distro. If not because AUR, I should still using rock-solid Linux Mint… lol… 😅
Same here. If Pacstall was as extensive as AUR I would still use Linux Mint.
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Your sample rate is 55 people on lemmy. DistroWatch has more than tripple the amount of arch users hitting the page per day. There are about 5500 registered accounts on the official arch forum.
Fedora has COPR, Opensuse has the OBS (which also works for other distros), NixOS (my beloved) has overlays…
I’ve been on NixOS for about a week now and I can say I’ve got access to pretty much all of the packages I was using on Arch just from nixpkgs. I even found it quite easy to package stuff myself!
Same. Exactly. Packaging can be a bit more complex, but once you get it, it’s great. There’s even the NUR, but I havent used it.
The power of flakes is unparalleled
I am only using them and they seem very kino. I don’t do anything complex with them, but, I like that adding new repos is as simple as reponame.url = repourl and then you can use its stuff after adding it to your outputs
What resources would you recommend for a complete beginner that wants to learn NixOS? I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, but I want to actually learn it and use the power of the nix language
AUR is really not that great? Who moves to Arch for it? It’s been my main OS for I don’t even know how long but AUR has been my primary pain point. PKGBUILD is cool and useful useful. AUR however, is untrusted (or rather shouldn’t be trusted), often out of date, sometimes requires compilation, and doesn’t even have any good pacman wrappers since yaourt (that I’m aware of).
Am I missing something?
doesn’t even have any good pacman wrappers since yaourt (that I’m aware of).
paruis cool
And the older
yayI have an hard time moving out of yay… TBH if AUR could be installable from pacman it would be awesome
AUR however, is untrusted (or rather shouldn’t be trusted), often out of date
So basically like a PPA which are used by many users of Ubuntu. The only difference is that the PKBUILD files used to build the packages are easier to check than the final packages in a PPA. And that’s exactly what is a big advantage for me.
sometimes requires compilation,
This is often because a project does not offer ready-made packages that can be downloaded from Github, for example. There are also people who do not trust ready-made packages from unknown third parties. I wouldn’t necessarily download and execute a binary file from a Dropbox of a user I don’t know. Compiling is the safer way if the source code is downloaded from a more trustworthy source.
and doesn’t even have any good pacman wrappers since yaourt (that I’m aware of).
Personally, I don’t think aurutils, paru and yay are bad. I currently use aurutils myself. But as far as AUR helpers are concerned, everyone has their own preferences. That’s why there are so many ;-)
Maybe I just don’t use enough random software, but I never understood the issue with PPA. The only ones I used were maintained by the software developer. If I trust the software, then I trust the PPA. The PKBLD on the other hand usually requires trust of some third party to wrap what the developer provided.
The PPA seems safer in that scenario.
How do you keep Discord up to date? Their PPA would do it. There were a few days a while back when the PKBLD was out of date and users were SOL for automatic updates. The community (maybe Manjaro) response was to use the Discord website or manually download and install. How is that better than PPA? Now I just always manually install when Discord has an update and don’t use the repository. My next install won’t be Arch based.
Yeah, AUR isn’t great because it’s engineered as a second class citizen given the necessity of third-party tools like
yaourt, and that the whole process of installation can’t be done directly through the first-party tool (pacman), such that updating the main packages can trivially cause third-party packages to suddenly stop working. ArchLinux offers just one way - their way - when it comes to dealing with software versions and if the user happens to depend on some thing they want to keep around, tough luck, and hope that future upgrades don’t force a breakage that requires a recompilation which may no longer work.That runs completely opposite to Gentoo, where the first-party repositories are defined the exact same way as third-party repositories, and that updates to first-party libraries generally don’t immediately break existing binaries because the distribution was built with recompilation requirements from upgrade breakages in mind. Since third-party packages are treated no differently (no second class citizen treatment), their first-party tool (
emerge) can manage the complete lifecycle of “third-party” packages in the exact same manner (as opposed to needing any third party tools to manage the build). This alone reduces the mental bandwidth for the end-users that are managing their set of required packages for their systems. All this flexibility is ultimately part of the various reasons that got me to switch from Arch back to Gentoo.
NixOS has NUR, but it’s not necessary because they take everyone’s pull requests in the official repo. I’ve been maintaining the software I use myself on the official nixpkgs, so I don’t need to use the NUR.
In my experience the AUR is a dumpsterfire where half of the stuff doesn’t work or breaks other things in your system. Definitely not a reason to switch to arch or manjaro for me.
AUR on Manjaro is a dumbsterfire, not on close to Arch based systems such as EndeavourOS. I had my fair share of problems with Manjaro regarding AUR (and reported those and one got fixed), after 1.5 years of usage. AUR and Manjaro are not compatible, because how the packages are handled in the official repository.
And on other distributions close to Arch, if you don’t install every little thing without thinking or checking, then it will end up in a dumbsterfire. I’m at least very glad this system of AUR exists for when I need it. Especially it is much simpler and trustworthy for distribution of software than any custom installer.
- Rikudou_Sage ( @rikudou@lemmings.world ) 5•1 year ago
What’s so special about it? Isn’t it just a repository? Or am I missing something? If it’s just a repo, Ubuntu has PPAs and everyone and their mother is creating PPAs.
PPAs and the AUR are very different. Where as PPAs contain prebuilt .deb packages, the AUR hosts PkgBuild scripts that typically pull from a git repo and compile a program for you.
I understand the confusion though, because they accomplish the same goal of installing software that is not in the main repos, but in different ways.
It’s a single, central, community space for build plans, which are extremely easy for anyone to create and submit.
Edit: And easier to audit than prebuilt packages
I’mma let you finish, but Nix had one of the best package managers of all time.
Great, why do you need a whole OS centering around a package manager?
nix and the other nix tools on NixOS is more than just the package manager, they cover all aspects of system management, including the packages.
What system management are you talking about? Sounds like Kernel to me.
dupe
Don’t know. The AUR is a big reason I use Arch. Obviously there’s PPAs/OBS or whatever but they’re not implemented nearly as well, I don’t need to go searching for new repos with the AUR or messing with repo priorities (fun times on Suse…) since everything is in the one place and there’s procedures for taking over orphaned packages. I use about twenty or so packages from it, many of them not packaged for any other distro. Personally not interested in using Flatpak since two package management systems is not my idea of KISS. Poor man’s AUR imo :).
(Edit for typo) With SUSE install OPI, it will search the OBS for you.
Just a clarification: It’s opi, not obi.
Oops I will edit and fix that
Many distros have independent community generated package repositories though most aren’t on official infrastructure. Ubuntu has PPA which is close. I try and avoid AUR as much as I can. It is a potential attack surface and packages are sometimes poorly maintained and break. I like it for system stuff and I mostly review the PKGBUILD. It seems like a good way for software to find a path into the official repos. There was a lot of resistance from me initially but for most desktop applications flatpak has proven to be a better solution.
The equivalent for Gentoo is the overlay system. gpo.zugaina.org (which is the best total package index) claims to list over 100000 ebuilds for 56000 different packages (some packages have multiple versions in-tree), and I know their database is not complete, since I contribute occasionally to an overlay that they don’t index. Oh, and that also doesn’t include things like perl library packages autogenerated by g-cpan.
So, um, yeah, useful but not unique.
It really just comes down to the differences in goals and philosophies between each distribution. Some distros have large curated repositories containing most of everything a normal user would want to use. That’s what people expect from those distros, and people use them because they want that experience. Likewise, people don’t use arch just because it has the AUR. They want a more DIY experience, and arch provides that, with the AUR being an essential part of how it works.
You’re not going to get arch users to switch to ubuntu or whatever by duct-taping an AUR clone onto it. Furthermore, I believe trying to make one distro “to rule them all” that attempts to appeal to every niche would be not only a train wreck technically, but an abomination, antithetical to the principles of the OSS community as well.