Linux @lemmy.ml

2y ago

Why don't more distributions have something like the AUR when it's the main reason why so many people use Arch Linux?

138 comments

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
  
  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.
- 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.
- Flatpack vs AUR comparison
  
  Chatgpt didn’t do a great job of contrasting them. Flatpak is also transparent
  
  Comparing flatpak with AUR makes almost no sense
- 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.

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.

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.

openSUSE has OBS, Fedora has COPR, and I'm pretty sure both Gentoo and NixOS have similar stuff. Do Ubuntu's PPAs count? Flatpaks and AppImages are also similar, although they are more limited and they aren't exactly "standard" packages.
- PPAs are fundamentally flawed. Since each repository is separate, they only care to maintain consistency internally, plus the packages of the Ubuntu version they were based on.
  Adding a PPA and using its packages on your system takes your dependency tree into a "cul de sac" where only that PPA is reliable.
  But of course people use multiple PPAs so what happens is that the dependency tree grows increasingly unrecoverable.
  Eventually you get the dreaded "requires X but cannot be installed" errors which pretty much mean you've hit a dead end. You can recover your system from it (aptitude can provide solutions) but they are extremely invasive, basically come down to uninstalling and reinstalling thousands of packages to bring your tree back to a manageable state.
  
  I admit I haven't used Ubuntu in years, so I didn't think they were that bad. Thanks for the info, it made me learn a dependency hell scenario I never thought about before.
- Ubuntu has Pacstall
- OBS and COPR don't even come close to the AUR in terms of ease of use. AUR is one searchable index, OBS and COPR are more like separate repositories that you have to find and add manually. There's multiple people building the same packages and you have to figure out which one you want to rely on. You also can't easily edit the packaging instructions and rebuild a package if it doesn't work for you.
  
  There's opi which does the whole search-and-add-repos thing for you, for OBS. Not sure if there's something similar for COPR.
  It's still separate repositories, though, I'll grant you that.
  
  That's true. A more user friendly version of them would be awesome.

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.

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.

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 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.
  
  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.
  
  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. 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.

What makes you think there aren't equivalents out there?
Gentoo's Guru repository, for one, and any of the multitude of ebuild repositories available through the eselect repository command.
The AUR is not particularly special.
- .
  
  And the AUR is not as extensive as the Nix Store.
  
  That sounds suspiciously like some shifting goalposts.

AUR is really not that great? Who moves to Arch for it? It's been my main OS for I don't even know how long but AUR has been my primary pain point. PKGBUILD is cool and useful useful. AUR however, is untrusted (or rather shouldn't be trusted), often out of date, sometimes requires compilation, and doesn't even have any good pacman wrappers since yaourt (that I'm aware of).
Am I missing something?
- doesn’t even have any good pacman wrappers since yaourt (that I’m aware of).
  paru is cool
  
  And the older yay
- AUR however, is untrusted (or rather shouldn’t be trusted), often out of date
  So basically like a PPA which are used by many users of Ubuntu. The only difference is that the PKBUILD files used to build the packages are easier to check than the final packages in a PPA. And that's exactly what is a big advantage for me.
  sometimes requires compilation,
  This is often because a project does not offer ready-made packages that can be downloaded from Github, for example. There are also people who do not trust ready-made packages from unknown third parties. I wouldn't necessarily download and execute a binary file from a Dropbox of a user I don't know. Compiling is the safer way if the source code is downloaded from a more trustworthy source.
  and doesn’t even have any good pacman wrappers since yaourt (that I’m aware of).
  Personally, I don't think aurutils, paru and yay are bad. I currently use aurutils myself. But as far as AUR helpers are concerned, everyone has their own preferences. That's why there are so many ;-)
- Yeah, AUR isn't great because it's engineered as a second class citizen given the necessity of third-party tools like yaourt, and that the whole process of installation can't be done directly through the first-party tool (pacman), such that updating the main packages can trivially cause third-party packages to suddenly stop working. ArchLinux offers just one way - their way - when it comes to dealing with software versions and if the user happens to depend on some thing they want to keep around, tough luck, and hope that future upgrades don't force a breakage that requires a recompilation which may no longer work.
  That runs completely opposite to Gentoo, where the first-party repositories are defined the exact same way as third-party repositories, and that updates to first-party libraries generally don't immediately break existing binaries because the distribution was built with recompilation requirements from upgrade breakages in mind. Since third-party packages are treated no differently (no second class citizen treatment), their first-party tool (emerge) can manage the complete lifecycle of "third-party" packages in the exact same manner (as opposed to needing any third party tools to manage the build). This alone reduces the mental bandwidth for the end-users that are managing their set of required packages for their systems. All this flexibility is ultimately part of the various reasons that got me to switch from Arch back to Gentoo.

I use Arch because pacman sounds cooler than apt, wakka wakka.

I'mma let you finish, but Nix had one of the best package managers of all time.
- dupe
- Great, why do you need a whole OS centering around a package manager?
  
  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.
  
  https://itsfoss.com/why-use-nixos/

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.

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.

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 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
- 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.
  
  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

For my needs I found that that flatpak just werks for anything not on the distros repos. And for the really obscure stuff I've used, I could just build from source
- Having to build from source is exactly why I don't think the AUR has a replacement. There are many similar package managers but non as extensive. Like NUR for NixOS.

AUR is definitely not the reason people choose arch haha
Fellow Linux folks, this direction is one of the main problems and you know it very darn well.
- Nah, it is my MAIN reason using Arch-based distro. If not because AUR, I should still using rock-solid Linux Mint.. lol.. 😅
  
  Same here. If Pacstall was as extensive as AUR I would still use Linux Mint.
- .
  
  Your sample rate is 55 people on lemmy. DistroWatch has more than tripple the amount of arch users hitting the page per day. There are about 5500 registered accounts on the official arch forum.

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.

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).
  
  Different distros. Arch is bleeding edge and Debian is more stable. You can rely on it not having bugs and it just working l!

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.
- 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.
- 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

Probably for the same reasons why there are so many packaging formats in the first place. If everyone settled on deb, rpm, or arch style tar packages. Then we wouldn't need the aur, flatpak, snap, appimage or anything else.
- That's it. We'll create a new standard that unites them all!
  
  Yep and then it's back to square one.

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.

@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?

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.

Brew on Linux?

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.

What does the AUR get you that a:
../configure --prefix=(pwd)/install make make install doesn't?
- Installing dependencies automatically mostly
- 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

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