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
have fun translating all the package names!
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?Just add trap ‘echo “"${last_command}" No updates available at this time”’ EXIT afterwards, in case the build fails ;) Might take a second to determine lol
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Typical Artix problem, I know the feel.
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Distrobox is your friend. Me, I like an immutable OS (kinoite) but I still want the AUR…
distrobox-create --name arch --image archlinux:latest distrobox enter arch install yay as normal yay -S vscodium distrobox-export --app vscodium yay exa distrobox-export --bin /usr/sbin/exa exit [back to kinoite] exa [works] vscodium [works, has icon in application launcher]Try it, you might like it !
Also great when you get some software as a deb for old Ubuntu and don’t want the trouble of manually making it work on a new system. Just make an old Ubuntu distrobox.
Ooh, a fellow Kinoite user!
I’m actually aware of Distrobox, but the thing I had in mind was for managing gaming wheel drivers, so I don’t think it’d work on distrobox. It’s not really that big of a deal honestly, I just made this meme to poke fun at it ^^’
Fair enough, but CUDA stuff works surprisingly well for e.g., I’d give it a go if it’s just USB.
Kinoite Represent!
./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.
Later: how to uninstall this app?
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 😅
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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.
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You beat me to it! I also use Arch BTW.
I use Arch BTW.
But also I feel like handing a AUR manager to a person is like giving them a block of C4 and a detonator and saying “good luck”
Stupidly powerful, but you can blow your hand or foot off in a second if you’re not aware
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)
Some programs may use libraries or tools specific to a distributions package manager. For example, yay, an AUR helper/pacman wrapper. You would have a very hard time getting it to work on Debian.
Other programs might only include build scripts for a distro specific build system. For example, a program might skip using a Makefile, and do everything in the Arch-specific PKGBUILD.
Generally though, most software uses a standard cross-distro (or even OS) build system. In this case, compiling from source would be an option on any distro. The program might still only be packaged for Arch/NixOS/Gentoo (or others), as it is a very simple process to do so.
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.
Yes, but not every package is in every repository
fr though why is the AUR specific to Arch when its pretty much an automated build/binary blob installer? I dont know much but it really seems like the AUR could easily be made available on other distros and renamed to LUR.
AUR maintainer for a few niche packages here. It’s because it lowers the barrier of entry. Remember this is all a volunteer effort.
What do I do when someone running ubuntu reports an error saying the PKGBUILD doesn’t work?
What if the program fails due to a different version of the kernel? (True story, only after 2 weeks of debugging I found out that the user was running Manjaro, which used a different naming convention for the kernel)
What do I do if someone reports a missing library dependency on fedora? Should I also package that library for fedora?
If I’m packaging drivers for specific hardware. I’m not going to install a specific distro just to fix your issue (sorry!). Most of my advice is given on a best effort basis. I made these build scripts for myself since I want native installs for all my software, and thought other people may be interested in them as well. If the responsibility of maintaining them becomes too overwhelming (like with your LUR case). I’ll probably host these build scripts in a private repo instead.
Fair enough. Would still be cool if we had a single pkgbuild client that could pull from repositories that host packages that are compatible for a given distro. Keep the AUR for Arch users, but have Fedora, Ubuntu etc. repos for users on those distros and their particular setups/dependencies etc. It’s more the technology of AUR that I think would be good for all of linux rather than the AUR’s contents itself.
That, or I’ll just wait for Vanilla/APX to get less janky.
You’re thinking of the OBS (open build service), which does exist.
I think it might be because of dependencies that might not be the same version on other distros
Now that I think of it, if i follow it to the logical conclusions of using a container to build and manage dependencies for each individual package across multiple distros all I’ve come up with is a self-building flatpak and/or VanillaOS 👀
