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yardy_sardley ,

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.

nyan ,

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.

shirro ,

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.

crunchi ,

@InternetPirate I mean apt based distros do have ppa’s although I have found aur to have better support. theoretically though they are equivalent i believe?

colonial ,
@colonial@lemmy.world avatar

The AUR is nice and all, but the reality is that most people will be served just fine (if not better) by the more curated repositories. Fedora’s bundled repositories are more than enough for my dev work - and thanks to Flatpak and AppImage, closing any gaps is pretty easy.

words_number ,

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.

unix_joe ,
@unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

The setup is kind of a kind of a logical fallacy here. More people are using Debian and RPM based distributions than Arch Linux. That being said:

Arch Linux has the AUR because at the time it was developed, the standards for distributing software on Linux were either RPM or DEB repositories. AUR was a necessity because one could get software on those distributions from the official vendor, but nobody was supporting Arch Linux. So it was a stopgap, an equalizer for one outlier platform.

It’s hardly the first such repository: FreeBSD ports and NetBSD pkgsrc predate the AUR by over a decade. Slackpkg predates AUR by a couple of years as well, though possibly not slapt-get. Gentoo has portage. Anyway, they took an idea that was already well-established, and catered it to a distribution that had fewer software options than major distributions.

These days it’s still the same scenario: a placeholder, to equalize what’s available for Arch Linux users versus other distributions.

People use Arch because it is a rolling release with a well-documented wiki. AUR is a nice perk, but hardly the main reason that people are using Arch Linux, given that other similar systems have existed for older distributions and operating systems for longer.

Nayviler ,

I don’t believe the setup is a fallacy, the AUR is one of the main reasons I use Arch. Sure, other distros may have similar systems in place, but the number of packages available on these systems just doesn’t compare. I did a brief amount of research, according to the FreeBSD manual, there are “over 30,000” ports available. In comparison, there are over 90,000 packages available on the AUR, and all of those are in addition to the ~13,000 packages in the official Arch repositories. If I want to obtain a piece of software, even if it isn’t in the arch repos, odds are, someone has already gone through the trouble of figuring out how to build/package it, and has added the PKGBUILD to the AUR.

This way of doing things is so much more elegant compared to how things are done on Debian or Red Hat-derived distros, where the solution to the problem of a piece of software not being in the official repos is to either (1) scour the internet and try to find if the developer maintains a repo for your distro, (2) look to see if a third party has packaged the software for your distro, and hope and pray that they maintain it, or (3), compile the package yourself, after manually hunting down all the various libraries the application needs, determining what they’re packaged as for your particular distro. The third solution doesn’t handle updates at all, unless the application’s developer has built-in an update checker into it.

Things are getting better as snaps and flatpaks gain popularity, but both of those systems have lots of issues of their own, and arguably aren’t anywhere near as good as a proper native package for your distro. Flatpaks don’t really work for CLI tools. Snaps are stupidly slow. Both snaps and flatpaks still struggle with theming. Applications installed with either take up way more space than their natively-packaged equivalents.

MischievousTomato ,

Things are getting better as snaps and flatpaks gain popularity, but both of those systems have lots of issues of their own, and arguably aren’t anywhere near as good as a proper native package for your distro. Flatpaks don’t really work for CLI tools. Snaps are stupidly slow. Both snaps and flatpaks still struggle with theming. Applications installed with either take up way more space than their natively-packaged equivalents.

Flatpaks would beat native packages if they didn’t have a trillion papercuts and issues. I’m on NixOS because I want to avoid using flatpak.

iopq ,

I’m wondering why flatpaks don’t work for command-line tools

MischievousTomato ,

I dont have links in hand, but I remember the flatpak devs saying they targeted/care about desktop gui apps. It’s one of the reasons why I won’t use flatpaks anytime soon if ever

atomkarinca ,

quantity doesn’t always mean quality and when the subject is aur, i wouldn’t count that as a metric. there are lots of orphaned packages, packages that have their source / binary / git versions, older libraries etc.

it USED TO be a nice repository, i don’t why. but it’s one of the main reasons i’m keeping away from arch because i cannot trust those packages anymore.

unix_joe ,
@unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Fair arguments. The AUR is huge compared to the operating systems that inspired it (no idea how packages/metrics are counted between different operating systems but it’s safe to say that more packages exist for Linux than in the FreeBSD realm), and it solves a problem that the Debian/Red Hat distributions are being faced with now that Flatpaks are essentially another packaging system ON TOP of whatever they have used for decades.

ycnz ,

Yeah, the Arch Wiki is incredible, even as a non-Arch user, it’s such a valuable source of knowledge.

demesisx ,
@demesisx@lemmy.ml avatar

I’mma let you finish, but Nix had one of the best package managers of all time.

InternetPirate OP ,

dupe

loudWaterEnjoyer ,
@loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Great, why do you need a whole OS centering around a package manager?

Laser ,

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.

loudWaterEnjoyer ,
@loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

What system management are you talking about? Sounds like Kernel to me.

demesisx ,
@demesisx@lemmy.ml avatar
rikudou ,

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.

Andy , (edited )
@Andy@programming.dev avatar

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

ItsPlasmaSir ,

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.

SymbolicLink , (edited )

I think looking at the two major enterprise players (Red Hat and Canonical) can give hints.

Fedora: run by Red Hat, upstream of RHEL. No way they are going to allow an unreviewed repository to be shipped with fedora by default. But they do have guides to add RPM fusion, and copr repos (the closest equivalent)

Ubuntu: run by Canonical. No way they are going to allow an unreviewed repository to be shipped with Ubuntu by default. But they do host and have guides for PPAs (closest AUR equivalent)

Debian: kind of the base layer for a lot of other distros. Debian itself is kept very minimal, and has a whole philosophy on what packages are allowed.

Edit: I realized this implies PPAs, copr and the AUR are the same when I know they aren’t functionally. I am just trying to highlight the motivations behind the distros and how it may play a part

InternetPirate OP ,

PPAs aren’t convenient at all compared to the AUR. Pacstall is the AUR for Ubuntu it just needs more packages. I would still be on Linux Mint if Pacstall was as extensive as the AUR.

SymbolicLink ,

Yeah that’s true.

I guess I was coming at it more from a “why doesn’t Ubuntu/fedora/debian promote or endorse something like the AUR in their official docs”

But yeah no distro really has an AUR, and it’s kind of a chicken and egg problem now because the barrier to entry for the AUR is much lower than anything else

HakFoo ,

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.

yoevli ,

I think you misunderstand the typical use case for the AUR. It’s generally used to install fairly niche software that might fly under the radar of distro maintainers. For example, I have CoreCtrl, a utility for managing AMD GPUs, on my install via the AUR. I’m not aware of any distro that packages it currently because it’s just too niche of a use case right now for maintainers to pay it any mind.

nan ,
@nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I think initially it was because the distro repositories were fairly small, agree now it is often a lot of niche stuff now which is one reason people who don’t use the AUR don’t really miss it either.

That package is in Fedora and Debian testing/Sid and the next Ubuntu. There is also an Ubuntu ppa for the and it’s on the opensuse build service.

yoevli ,

Ah okay, I haven’t looked in a while so my info must have been outdated.

HakFoo ,

I guess I was baffled when FVWM of all things was an AUR package. To me, that’s something that’s been available in the mainstream package set on almost any full-sized x86/x86-64 distribution made in the last 25 years. I suppose it’s not popular these days, but you sort of expect it to materialize because it was checked into auto-build processes in the late Clinton administration and never removed.

Peeko ,

Yeah if the AUR can stop me from having to compile even just one package from instructions on a github page (like with corectrl, which I also use lol), then it’s enough for me to keep using arch. I will say, AUR is in the normal arch repo I think? But there’s other packages I’ve used in the past that I can’t find in there, like specific versions of mangohud or gamescope, goverlay, etc.

AUR still means you gotta compile sometimes, but it’s so much less of a hassle to just search the AUR and hit go then to mess around compiling something manually.

restarossa ,
@restarossa@infosec.pub avatar

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.

ghariksforge ,

I admit AUR was a huge reason why I made the move to Arch. But with Flatpak gaining more and more traction, the benefits of AUR are shrinking fast.

iusearchbtw ,
@iusearchbtw@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

The AUR still has a lot of niche software that hasn’t been Flatpakked, but yeah. Flatpaks are way more convenient, especially for large software where AUR compilation can take a long time.

brad ,

The other day I died of old age compiling Librewolf from the AUR

InternetPirate OP ,

What’s wrong with librewolf-bin? Would you choose the Flatpack or the bin from the AUR?

brad ,

I ended up going with librewolf-bin. The flatpak version had some issues for me because my configs are a spaghetti nightmare

EddyBot ,

you probably only compile on one thread if you have a default /etc/makepkg.conf
though compiling a firefox browser on 12+ threads still takes several minutes up to half an hour
(try doing that with a chromium browser, thats hours rather than minutes)

original_ish_name ,

Install librewolf-bin

unwillingsomnambulist ,

Agreed. DaVinci Resolve Studio and Blackmagic hardware drivers are examples of that kind of niche software that I use on a regular basis. The only supported route for that stuff is RHEL/CentOS, and those don’t seem particularly well-suited to my main machine’s other purpose, which is games. If someone’s already done the legwork to solve the problem for Arch, and the build files check out, why reinvent the wheel?

Additionally, it’s the only distro I could get Resolve Studio working on with an AMD GPU consistently.

For the most part, though, the official repos and Flathub give me what I need.

unwillingsomnambulist ,

Agreed. DaVinci Resolve Studio and Blackmagic hardware drivers are examples of that kind of niche software that I use on a regular basis. The only supported route for that stuff is RHEL/CentOS, and those don’t seem particularly well-suited to my main machine’s other purpose, which is games. If someone’s already done the legwork to solve the problem for Arch, and the build files check out, why reinvent the wheel?

Additionally, it’s the only distro I could get Resolve Studio working on with an AMD GPU consistently.

For the most part, though, the official repos and Flathub give me what I need.

InternetPirate OP ,
ashley ,

Chatgpt didn’t do a great job of contrasting them. Flatpak is also transparent

loudWaterEnjoyer ,
@loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Comparing flatpak with AUR makes almost no sense

CrypticCoffee ,

Why can it not be compared? It’s a repository to install software…

loudWaterEnjoyer ,
@loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Flatpak acts like its virtualizing the applications, AUR shipped binaries are build by trusted arch users. Those eco systems operate on totally different levels, there are (more) audits in AUR.

Flatpak or god forbid even Snap are fucked up software distribution platforms you should only use as last resort and when the software you are trying to get is not available on your OS repository/package manager and should be simply avoided.

CrypticCoffee ,

Ah, it’s subjective. You trust AUR users rather than flatpak users. Flatpak and snap are hardly comparable. The flaws of Snap are not the flaws of Flatpak. You also prefer binaries to sandboxed apps. You’re old school?

loudWaterEnjoyer ,
@loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

It is not subjective. Its not any AUR user, there are big streams tested especially for that certain system by trusted people before releasing.

And for the record, your sandboxed apps are also binaries and to set it straight, flatpak is mostly not really virtualizing your app. It’s complete garbage, have a look at how flatpak achieves this “virtualization” and how it’s implemented in 9 out of 10 flatpaks.

shirro , (edited )

A subset of AUR PKGBUILDs are downloading a prebuilt desktop application binary packaged for another distro (deb, rpm, tarball, appimage) from upstream and then unpacking it. Those packages are trying to solve some of the same problems as flatpak, distributing a generic desktop binary but often do it worse and people should be weighing the alternatives. More broadly AUR packages aren’t comparable with flatpak but some are.

Luminance6716 ,

I do really like AUR, but agree Flatpak is a good alternative. I can’t stand snap, snap packages just feel slower.

constantokra ,

I tried arch and got rid of it after a couple months because of the aur. Do people just not check out what they’re installing? Every time I wanted a new software i’d have to check it out to make sure it was legit, and every time I updated i’d have to check the diffs to make sure it was still legit. Otherwise, who knows what you’re actually installing.

ghariksforge ,

you don’t have to use AUR if you don’t want to.

Often the AUR file is very short and just a link to a repo.

Peeko ,

Main reason I like the AUR is for really niche packages that aren’t in any main repos. Smaller github projects, forks of main projects that fix bugs, basically anything that you would otherwise have to compile from source is on the AUR. And while you still might have to compile it, it’s all setup and managed for you, which I really like.

jcb2016 ,
@jcb2016@lemmy.world avatar

Arch is special 😁

ajid77 ,
@ajid77@social.linux.pizza avatar

@jcb2016 @InternetPirate I I have never tried one. What's the most difference between Arch and Ubuntu? 🤔

eruchitanda ,
@eruchitanda@lemmy.world avatar

The goals each one is trying to achieve.

Arch is build it yourself. You are presented with a CLI (command-line interface) installer, and you decide what do you want to have on your system.

Another thing Arch is trying to achieve is the principal of KISS, keep it simple. The software should do what is was meant to do, and that’s it.

Ubuntu’s ‘goal’ is to give the user experience of ‘it just works’.

Pros to Arch - you know exactly what you have on your system, and you have more control.

Cons to Arch - you are in cotrol, so you need to be careful not mess things up (if something happened, it’s the user fault).

Pros to Ubuntu - you have a lot of software installed, and you don’t need to set up a lot. So it’s very easy for new users.

Cons to Ubuntu - you have a lot of software installed. Some of them you might not use, at all (some would say it’s a bloatware).

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