What software only works on Arch? If anything I see stuff that’s packaged for arch but can be installed from source on other distros without issue.
Ubuntu-only software, on the other hand, is infuriating
There’s a lot of content packaged for the AUR that isn’t readily available to people using less enlightened distributions.
I use Arch BTW.
Seriousposting: a lot of software just isn’t packaged as deb or rpm because no one has taken the time to do it. The AUR is really fucking convenient as an end user. And yes, you should always skim AUR packages to be sure they’re doing what they claim to do and aren’t garbage, anyone can post anything. I have seen a lot of trash uploaded to the AUR.
I used to think the A in AUR stood for anarchy
OP said “only available for Arch” not “only packaged for Arch”. These are not remotely the same thing.
I uSe ArCh AnD tHeReFoRe PoSeSs A uNiQuE aBiLiTy To RuN make fRoM a TeRmInAl!!!1!
There are many things that can stop me from running a program but what distro I’m using is not one of them.
Become distro-agnostic. Don’t be afraid of source code.
Seriously, look at what the pkgbuild is doing on Arch and replicate it by hand on your distro of choice. That’s all a pkgbuild is: a simple bash installation script.
I like your funny words, computer man. 👉😀👉
I use KDE Neon, btw.
based distro kde #1
True but dependency hell and maintaining updates for that is a headache I wish not to deal with.
AppImage and Docker has resolved a lot of that for me if its not in my distros package manager. It’s my goto for the same reason of just not wanting to deal with it.
How do you use appimage for binaries built from source?
Premade AppImage or self-contained binary, I’ll usually drop it into ~/.local/bin.
Something I have to compile, I’ll usually do in a dockerfile tracked in my dotfiles repo.
Only thing I’ve compiled from source on my host in the last year is https://github.com/werman/noise-suppression-for-voice.
Could just be my use cases now compared to 10 years ago, but I’ve just found I’m rarely compiling these days on the host system. At least the configure-make-install or ninja variety. I’m sure I install a package here or there that does it in the background. Numpy comes to mind or an AUR package with Arch.
Configure and make are your best friends.
Just don’t worry about timely updates.
timely updates
You mean I shouldn’t
git pull; git checkout HEAD; sudo make installevery day?
deleted by creator
Typical Artix problem, I know the feel.
deleted by creator
./configure
make
sudo make install
Thanks, Now excuse me while I put a million compiler flags to optimse my program by 1 nanosecond and contemplate the reasons for human existence.
cannot find libxyz.so.1
And so the journey continues, deep into the forest of antiquated build systems and bleeding edge dependencies
I hope you configure it to install to .local
Na that’s what the sudo is for muahahahahahaaa 😅
You Linux people are funny.
I just download the Windows versions and run them with Wine.
I don’t understand any of this, my windows install is on a 120GB SSD, it’s full now and I can’t update my graphics driver.
finds complete updated AUR package
am running Fedora
Proceeds to unpack AUR and reverse engineer what it does so you can get what you need
True story for some stupid ethernet driver patch: alx-wol-dkms
AUR stronk
Very very very rarely some stuff on it is sometimes orphaned or outdated, but it’s really fucking great to simply “paru” and the thing I want.
TFW you’re caught between being an average person and tech nerd wizard, just competent to copy/paste ubuntu-based install instructions in the terminal but get a headache trying to compile from source. I use Mint, btw.
I consider myself relatively familiar with linux, people come to me when they have issues or need help setting something up
But compiling stuff from source? That still gives me headaches 😩
AUR is love, AUR is life 🙏
This is what always leads me back to arch. I can follow an outdated 12-step guide to installing the software in Debian or I can install it with one command from AUR.
Depending on the software, you can use it inside an arch Linux distrobox with yay or some other helper
./configure && make && sudo make installGet off my lawn.
I copy pasted this in my terminal and got an error. Apparently my Linux doesn’t know
&&I can’t imagine that’s true.
It automatically converted the code, I edited the comment
I’m a noob, isn’t every (open source) program aviable for every distribution if you compile it from source? It’s all Linux in the end (i never compiled a program from source, so I don’t know if it’s easy at all)
Usually the only tricky part of compiling from source is tracking down dependencies. The package manager does that for you normally but you’re not using the package manager when compiling from scratch. The actual building (even compiling a kernel) isn’t all that complicated.
Usually developers list dependencies in README anyway
True. It’s the dependencies of dependencies where the tricky part starts.
Dependencies almost always are present in distro repos. What’s tricky?
If you need the python header files, depending on your distro, you may need to install python3-dev, python3-devel, python3, or some other variation on the name. For a novice, this might not always be obvious and they might not know things like
apt-fileare helpful for figuring it out.Huh. Shouldn’t apt install header dependencies too? I’m using system where every package comes with headers, so I don’t install headers separately.
Debian and RedHat based distros typically do not bundle them together. The have separate
-devand-develpackages for headers.
distrobox for most cases should be fine…
Can’t you just use it though distrobox and podman?
Not as easy or as convenient as
yay -Sy appnameit actually is, you just append the distrobox command before it
distrobox enter arch -- yay -Sy appnameA simple
yay -Syfrom Arch btw takes less computing power and doesn’t depend on an external dependency.But then you stuck with arch. I’ve never had any software that wasn’t a flatpak or in the Debian repos. I use Fedora.
I would say you are stuck on Fedora too, what is your point?
I’ve never had any software that wasn’t a flatpak or in the Debian repos.
There are quite a number of them, hence the reason for OP’s meme.
Really? I honestly have never had that problem. Can you name a few? (I’m completely serious. Don’t take this as sarcasm)
There are so many software devs that package AURs because Arch has made it easy for them to do so. No need to give examples if you are totally fine with your brand of distro.
But whether you’ll hit the minor snag OP memes about depends on your software needs.
But then you are installing it locally. The benefit to containers is they can be deleted. Containers allow you to have separate systems that are not apart of your main system. This keeps everything clean so you don’t have to worry.
Also Arch is a unstable mess and requires updates way to frequently
But then your installing it locally. The benefit to containers is they can be deleted.
This does not make any sense in this context. Or anywhere else if you want to get real pedantic.
Also Arch is a unstable mess and requires updates way to frequently
Arch can be unstable at times but that’s part of the deal as is with any distro you’ll install and use over time. Requiring updates frequently is also not a valid argument against Arch as you can choose when to update.
Arch ships to new of packages for my comfort. This leads to breakages if you don’t read the update notes. I want my system to stay updated automatically and Arch causes to many headaches.
Software updates can potentially cause issues in general. This situation is not unique to Arch.
There’s nothing wrong with a rolling release model where you get newer software that’s closer to upstream. In most cases, you get security updates faster and in some instances you get bug fixes & new features from upstream that will take weeks if not months to hit “stable” distros.
That’s fine if you like that kind of thing. However it isn’t for everyone
Arch ships
totoo new of packages for my comfort.Sorry to be a grammar nazi but that’s the second time and it annoys some of us. It’s literally a different word with a different meaning!
…or nixpkgs they have the most packages of any distro (although, I don’t know if they also count all the language specific libs like from pypi, npm, crates, etc.)
Yes, most packages are auto-generated from those. When it comes to manually generated packages AUR should still be #1. Not that I ever missed any packages in nixpkgs…
You can install their package manager on your distro of choice
