What does the AUR get you that a:
../configure --prefix=(pwd)/install make make installdoesn’t?It gives you a lot of convenience, auto updates, and dependencies. While it is nice being up to date by checking the git and making it by yourself it is much more convenient to have a package manager for it when you have many Make packages
Installing dependencies automatically mostly
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.
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.
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
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.
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It’s so kino. Incredibly hard to learn and much more to master, but much more powerful. Nothing beats easily modifying a derivation’s source, or adding patches or build options or whatever you want.
Same as any ports system. Though yes, for Linux the alternatives may seem less convenient like Portage or less extensive like Pkgsrc.
I only use Gentoo for a small bit, so I can’t comment on it, and I haven’t used the other thing ever. I wish linux a culture similar to the bsds when it came to ports stuff. /usr/local is barely used if ever.
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.
Because the AUR is a pretty low quality repo. Not sure if anything has changed since 2 years ago, but last I used arch, the AUR was full of broken, abandoned, and unbuildable packages. The Debian repos, fedora+rpmfusion, etc, provide a comparable number of software packages with substantially higher quality, hence no need for the AUR. Fedora actually has COPRs which suffer from the same quality issues as the AUR for similar reasons.
Thing is, the AUR isn’t really meant to be your primary repo. You can really get anything into the AUR.
The reason why I love it so much is because if I need a package that’s not in the main arch repo (which tbh isn’t many), then I don’t need to bother going to some github page and compiling from source, I can just find it in the AUR and it’s all done for me. I did this with things like goverlay and it’s one thing that I immediately miss when I distro hop away from something arch-based.
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.
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.
The other day I died of old age compiling Librewolf from the AUR
Install librewolf-bin
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)What’s wrong with librewolf-bin? Would you choose the Flatpack or the bin from the AUR?
I ended up going with librewolf-bin. The flatpak version had some issues for me because my configs are a spaghetti nightmare
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.
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.
Chatgpt didn’t do a great job of contrasting them. Flatpak is also transparent
Comparing flatpak with AUR makes almost no sense
Why can it not be compared? It’s a repository to install software…
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I do really like AUR, but agree Flatpak is a good alternative. I can’t stand snap, snap packages just feel slower.
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.
Arch is special 😁
@jcb2016 @InternetPirate I I have never tried one. What’s the most difference between Arch and Ubuntu? 🤔
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ah okay, I haven’t looked in a while so my info must have been outdated.
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.
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.
I use Arch because pacman sounds cooler than apt, wakka wakka.
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
