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!
Be careful with AUR. You’re essentially running a bash script you found on the internet. At least check if the package is made by the dev, and not some random dude. If it’s not, definitely check how the package is built, and check every diff.
Niche software is especially dangerous, as there aren’t that many people looking into the build process.
In my years of maining arch, I’ve only had at most 3-4 AUR packages installed at a time. And I’ve used it for stuff like Skype and Dropbox, which I’ll try moving to flatpak.
I’m currently experimenting with guix. It’s a bit insane, but pretty amazing.