I know I said in my last post I’m a noob, and, i still am, I’m just a noob who can follow a YouTube tutorial. I installed Arch, not only for its minimalistic install, but also because I love the AUR. Everything I could ever want to install is there, and anyone who wants to upload their files can. This gives a windows-like install experience, which, pardon my… spanish, is actually pretty good. Any program is free to be uploaded and installed by anyone.

My question to you is: If you do not use an arch-based distro, how do you go about installing software? I’ve heard people say that “the default package manager is enough” but I can’t be the only person who installs niche software. I wouldn’t want to only be able to install packages hopefully approved by my distro. Flatpaks are kind of annoying, in my opinion? It’s not a native install of a package, it’s sandboxed (which can be good in some cases, but in general just an inconvenience.) Compiling from source is too hardcore for me, so props if that is you, however, non-FOSS software has to be moved by hand to its specific folders and .desktop files have to be made by text. If you don’t use the AUR, how do you go about your Linux experience?

P.S. Hope you like the new sux/teal logo!

  • rimu@lemmy.nz
    4·
    1 year ago

    80% of the time, compiling something from source is just a matter of downloading the code, opening a terminal and changing to the directory containing the source and running these commands:

    ./configure
make
make install

    It’s the same 3 commands, 80% of the time.

    Installing the prerequisites can be tricky, if the docs are lacking.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      1 year ago

      And the readme is generally helpful if it’s different from what you said. I’ve installed tons of software from source, it’s really not a big deal.

    • GustavoM@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s the same 3 commands, 80% of the time.

      Indeed. Sometimes it takes two, sometimes it takes only one.

  • agitated_judge@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    1 year ago

    Let’s see… “anyone who wants to upload their files can”. “This gives a windows-like install experience”. “Any program is free to be uploaded and installed by anyone”. Read those again and realize what a massive security hole that is.

    • carrot@sh.itjust.worksOPM
      01·
      1 year ago

      This is the same thing Tim Cook says to defend the app store. I trust that I can sniff out what is malware and what isnt. And if I cant, its hurting nobody except for me. I see it as overwhelming good to have so much software available at my fingertips.

      • agitated_judge@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        1 year ago

        Please read on what a botnet is. Malware does not hurt only you. By your own words, you’re just a noob, you have to understand that you have a lot to learn.

  • Kangie@lemmy.srcfiles.zip
    2·
    1 year ago

    I use Gentoo. We have what’s probably the most flexible and powerful package manager for Linux.

    Adding new packages is trivial; an ebuild script is created which describes how to build the package, along with a little metadata. This is placed into an ebuild repository - I like to contribute to the Gentoo one, but any folder structure will do (however git is by for the most common method). It’s not uncommon for a Gentoo user to package software outside the official repos. These will have all of the features (like configurability via USE flags) that ebuilds in the official repo have.

    These repositories, for convenience, may be registered with Gentoo and linked on https://repos.gentoo.org/ where the eselect repository tool can be used to add them by name from the index. http://gpo.zugaina.org/ indexes known ebuild repos and can help you to identify whether or not something has already been packaged.

  • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    1 year ago

    I use Void, so basicially, the equivalent of the AUR is xbps-src, so… you compile everything from source based on templates.

  • True Blue@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    1 year ago

    Fedora has a pretty good amount of software in the repositories, so a lot of the time that’s enough. When it’s not, flatpak with flathub have most gui software covered, and outside of that, if we’re talking about terminal or command line stuff, most of those have their own custom way to install them, or they just have self contained binaries that you can put in ~/.local/bin/.

    I haven’t run into many issues with flatpak like it sounds like you have, so that really covers a lot of it for me honestly.

  • sturgax@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    1 year ago

    I used arch for a long time and only recently switched over to fedora silverblue. One of the things I missed most was the AUR (and pacman), for sure. However, I discovered something called distrobox. It allows me to install an archlinux container and from there I can use the AUR with no problems. It’s pretty seamless, too. So, if there is something I can’t find something then it’s no problem now.

    Though, fedora has pretty much everything anyway. Flatpaks are getting damn good.

    • ruckblack@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      1 year ago

      I would try fedora but I’m still skeptical about flatpaks. Seems like it would introduce bloat and a lot of complexity that I don’t want or need.

      • sturgax@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        1 year ago

        Oh, I get that. They do introduce some bloat. Though, at least for me, I have enough resources to manage it without much concern. I wouldn’t recommend flatpak’s if you want a lean, mean, machine. That’s for sure.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    1 year ago

    I’m on OpenSUSE, so we have OBS, which is kind of like the AUR except packages are built on the distro’s servers instead of end user machines.

    I used Arch for ~5 years, and I honestly don’t miss the AUR much. I only have a handful of packages installed from OBS because the repositories have everything else I need.

    If I need something that isn’t packaged (very rare), I just build it from source myself. It’s not a big deal.

    • carrot@sh.itjust.worksOPM
      1·
      1 year ago

      If I ever decide to leave the aur, opensuse is almost certainly where im going. Ive tried it before, and the software is awesome.

  • Andy@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    Apt is quite good for the debian based systems. I’ve never had a problem in the last decade installing anything on debian or Ubuntu

    • carrot@sh.itjust.worksOPM
      0·
      1 year ago

      I’ve considered switching to debian (especially recently with the new release), its size really helps in terms of package management. Usually when high-level software companies want to do the bare minimum release to linux they just package it in a .deb and save it on their website.

      • Andy@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        I’m at an age where I really don’t want to deal with configuring Linux. My requirements are that it needs to work, it needs to be quick and easy to configure, and I need to be able to develop on it without any hassle.

        Ubuntu is great for this. I can spend my days programming, instead of fighting my system

        • jedix@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          1 year ago

          I used to use Ubuntu for this reason, but the installs eventually go bad… and it’s a huge pain to keep them going. I think they just expect you to keep reinstalling? Updating seems to not work out the best.

          Eventually, I just went to debian because it works for at least 5 years. With Ubuntu, I found it was good for a year or two then I wasted more time trying to update or fix something than I ever did with configuration.

          • jetuon@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            1 year ago

            I agree. I have been using an old Debian stable (Buster) for about 7 years. It doesn’t require much configuration, not at all if using the packages from the default package manager. There are also backports packages for the popular ones.