this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Most people I know just use Arch Linux and the AUR. It seems to be the easiest system around for maximal package support and it's well maintained.
As someone that prefers the repo method to the all-in-one package method, Arch is becoming more and more appealing
Please keep in mind though that the reason the AUR tends to work well is because it's a very loose wrapper over source packages. Compiling from source is a very flexible process which adapts well to system changes. But at the same time it's resource-consuming (CPU time and RAM).
Most importantly, AUR is completely unsupported by any of the Arch-based distros including Arch itself. Anybody who mentions "AUR compatibility" either doesn't know what they're saying or are making a tongue-in-cheek observation about how their system happens to be coping well with a very specific selection of AUR packages that they are using at that particular moment. But there's absolutely no guarantee that your system will do well with whatever AUR packages you attempt to use, or that they'll keep working a month or a year from now.
AUR tends to work really well for me. There are binary packages for almost every software that I use. Things do go wrong occasionally, but when they do it's almost always solvable. AUR packages are just scripts, so you can go and fix the problem yourself and then tell the maintainer how you did it.
Then i prefer Gentoo's approach.
Arch and Gentoo basically approach this issue from the opposite sides. Gentoo is source-first with optional binaries as-needed, Arch is binary first with optional source as-needed. Gentoo also tends to support the exceptions (the binaries) much better than Arch supports AUR (which is not at all).
...and gentoo USE flags are so addictive...
On the contrary AUR seems to have a lot more binary packages than source packages in my experience. Tons of package also have a "-bin" version (e.g. yay).
Your "unsupported" comment is a bit weird. It's the AUR user community that supports Arch and makes AUR compatible with it. I don't know why somebody would contemplate the other way around. I mean, it's the while philosophy of the AUR.
I've been using it for the past 12 years and I rarely got any issues with it. I think you fear mongering quite a bit. Sure, you get over some abandoned packages from time to time and once in a blue moon you get a dependency that doesn't install properly. When that happen you post a comment on the AUR or flag the package and it's solved in a matter of days most of the time. It's surprising that such a system would work so well, but it does.
Enable the chaotic AUR and you won't even have to build from source.