How do you guys use a distro that doesn't have the AUR (or equivalent?) - eviltoast

I know I said in my last post I’m a noob, and, i still am, I’m just a noob who can follow a YouTube tutorial. I installed Arch, not only for its minimalistic install, but also because I love the AUR. Everything I could ever want to install is there, and anyone who wants to upload their files can. This gives a windows-like install experience, which, pardon my… spanish, is actually pretty good. Any program is free to be uploaded and installed by anyone.

My question to you is: If you do not use an arch-based distro, how do you go about installing software? I’ve heard people say that “the default package manager is enough” but I can’t be the only person who installs niche software. I wouldn’t want to only be able to install packages hopefully approved by my distro. Flatpaks are kind of annoying, in my opinion? It’s not a native install of a package, it’s sandboxed (which can be good in some cases, but in general just an inconvenience.) Compiling from source is too hardcore for me, so props if that is you, however, non-FOSS software has to be moved by hand to its specific folders and .desktop files have to be made by text. If you don’t use the AUR, how do you go about your Linux experience?

P.S. Hope you like the new sux/teal logo!

  • True Blue@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    1 year ago

    Fedora has a pretty good amount of software in the repositories, so a lot of the time that’s enough. When it’s not, flatpak with flathub have most gui software covered, and outside of that, if we’re talking about terminal or command line stuff, most of those have their own custom way to install them, or they just have self contained binaries that you can put in ~/.local/bin/.

    I haven’t run into many issues with flatpak like it sounds like you have, so that really covers a lot of it for me honestly.

    • carrot@sh.itjust.worksOPM
      1·
      1 year ago

      Maybe thats where my noob comes in but flatpak has been more of a workaround than an actual install for me. Things always not running correctly or being unable to do certain things due to containerization. If I was running a server though, and if flatpak is efficient, it seems like a great idea!

      • True Blue@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        1 year ago

        Do you know about Flatseal? It’s an application that lets you manage flatpak permissions. Until the portals system is fully working, weakening the sandboxing using Flatseal is what a lot of people do to make the apps work correctly.

        Also, if you use KDE, the settings app has flatseal-like functionality built in.

        • carrot@sh.itjust.worksOPM
          1·
          1 year ago

          Never heard of it, but it sounds awesome! I’ll definetly be looking more into it. I’m on XFCE, so I’ll have to install it manually. But overall its great that someone has gone out and made a permissions manager for flatpak.