I’m looking for the opinions and experience of unbiased Linux enthusiasts whose daily driver uses an arch based distro.

When I was using and learning EndeavourOS I frequently (enough) came across posts and videos that stated that although the AUR is useful, but it’s use should be limited to keep your system stable. If someone was having issues or a discussion about stability came up, there was always a seemingly condescending tone of “well my system has always worked fine, just don’t install too many AURs and it won’t break”.

However, whenever I see posts that relate to package managers, I always see praises for the AUR that seem to imply that there aren’t really any issues.

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
    6·
    2 years ago

    The most common issue is you find out the package is out of date, so you might need to update it yourself if you want the latest release. But the alternative is not having the package at all

    • tokyo@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      2 years ago

      That does not sound like the worst thing to encounter. Seems like a relatively benign issue for the benefit.

      Thank you for your input.

  • The Doctor@beehaw.org
    61·
    2 years ago

    Probably about a fifth of the packages I have installed on my daily driver are from the AUR, and most of the time I forget they came from the AUR.

    • tokyo@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      I feel like this is something that I’d encounter. When I prepared my system I found that a lot of software I wanted was primarily available through the AUR since I tend to use open source software.

      It is good to know that it hasn’t seemingly presented any major issues

  • LeFantome@programming.dev
    4·
    2 years ago

    Obviously the correct answer is the useless one that it varies package to package. AUR is a community effort.

    In practice, I use a great many AUR packages and they work just fine. I avoid the AUR if there is an alternative in Core or Extra but much of the value of Arch is the AUR.

    The number of AUR packages is not really a factor. You can have dozens of AUR packages installed without incident. A single poorly ( or maliciously ) crafted AUR package can cause problems.

    Dependencies can be a problem. I used an AUR version of GIMP for a while ( 2.99 ) but it depended on GEGL and, at some point, the version of GEGL was not new enough and it broke. Overall though, issuers have been rare in my experience.

    If you do have an issue, fixing it is typically easy. Arch package management is great in my experience.

    I would stay away from Pamac ( from Manjaro but in the AUR ) and just use yay. Pamac breaks things. If you want more than that, try Pacseek.

  • Sentau@lemmy.one
    2·
    2 years ago

    The point is that the official arch repositories have most of the software one might need. Using AUR only for software which I can’t find in the official repos has meant that I have very few packages installed from the AUR and none of them have caused stability issues with my system as these packages are actively maintained

  • YellowmanfromMoon@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 years ago

    The AUR is a great tool. however I personally try to not install to many packages from it since many packages are outdated and you have to trust the maintainer(s) of the package which can be quite dangerous (especially for small projects).

  • apt_install_coffee@lemmy.ml
    1·
    2 years ago

    Interdependency is a large part of issues; If you have an aur package that breaks but has no other packages that depend on it, you have a minor problem. If you have an aur package that breaks which many packages depend on, you have a major problem. Keep your libraries as unchanging as you can; out of AUR if possible, definitely not -git packages.

    An AUR pkgbuild can also perform arbitrary actions to install the package, the security implication is obvious but many also miss that, yes as you install more AUR packages your system will diverge from the expected Arch state. Normally this is minor and fine, but it could trip you up here and there.

  • s_s@lemmy.one
    1·
    2 years ago

    Depends on what packages you install.

    There are lots of AUR packages marked -git which would be the very definition of unstable.

    On the other hand, the kernel modules for my wifi dongle’s drivers are only in the AUR and have been rock solid for 5 years.

    It’s really a “if you need to ask, don’t use AUR” type thing. In debian-based systems, it’s the same thing with PPAs. The software is there if you need it, just understand that nobody is validating it.

    What’s great about the AUR is that the Arch build system is a fantastic bit of tooling and is incredibly easy to use.