• MCk3@lemmy.worldEnglish
    861·
    1 year ago

    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

    • seaQueue@lemmy.world
      352·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
    711·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • dhtseany@lemmy.ml
      34·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        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.

          • sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            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.

  • MalReynolds@slrpnk.netEnglish
    31·
    1 year ago

    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 !

    • Sh1nyM3t4l4ss@lemmy.world
      8·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • SimplyTadpole@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      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 ^^’

      • MalReynolds@slrpnk.netEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Fair enough, but CUDA stuff works surprisingly well for e.g., I’d give it a go if it’s just USB.

        Kinoite Represent!

    • intelati@programming.dev
      21·
      1 year ago

      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

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    24·
    1 year ago

    You Linux people are funny.

    I just download the Windows versions and run them with Wine.

    • Comment105
      5·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • mlg@lemmy.worldEnglish
    231·
    1 year ago

    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

  • Smokeydope@lemmy.worldEnglish
    221·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Ignotum@lemmy.world
      12·
      1 year ago

      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 🙏

  • frippa@lemmy.ml
    13·
    1 year ago

    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)

    • deadcade@lemmy.deadca.de
      7·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • thelastknowngod
      3·
      1 year ago

      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.

        • thelastknowngod
          21·
          1 year ago

          True. It’s the dependencies of dependencies where the tricky part starts.

            • thelastknowngod
              31·
              1 year ago

              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-file are helpful for figuring it out.

              • uis@lemmy.world
                1·
                1 year ago

                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.

                • thelastknowngod
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  Debian and RedHat based distros typically do not bundle them together. The have separate -dev and -devel packages for headers.

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
    12·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • StarDreamer@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      16·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • merthyr1831@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • bob@infosec.pub
      7·
      1 year ago

      I think it might be because of dependencies that might not be the same version on other distros

      • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
        71·
        1 year ago

        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 👀