Flatpak vs AUR?

[Kresimir]

I wrote a bunch of posts about that, let me find them.

How to Install Apps from AUR

makepkg is a script that creates a foreign (i.e. non-repo) package, which can be installed using pacman -U. Before we can make a package, we need to have both base-devel and git packages installed: sudo pacman -S base-devel git --needed On EndeavourOS, these should already be preinstalled. Depending on the specific package, we may also need other programs, like compilers and build systems. These are called “make dependencies”. Typically, making a package from the AUR involves the following …

AUR PKGBUILDs

The AUR is one of the safest ways to install software, just because it is so transparent. But it does not tolerate just looking up the package in Pamac and clicking on the Build button, or doing yay package_name blindly. It requires that the user knows what’s going on. That’s why I recommend trying to build at least one package manually, to understand what’s going on, before using an AUR helper like pamac or yay. yay has a nice feature that allows you to inspect a PKGBUILD file before installin…

Current Best Practice Flatpack or Aur?

It does not, if the packager is either malicious or incompetent (the two main concerns when it comes to installing software). It merely gives the user false sense of security. The biggest advantage of the AUR is that you build the packages yourself (according to a recipe posted by someone online), so you can know exactly what goes in the package, assuming you care to know. If you don’t care to know, then this advantage of the AUR is completely lost to you. With Flatpaks and AppImages, you hav…

KDE's August 2020 Apps Update

Oh boy, where to even start? Well, with Flatpak, because it’s a much lesser evil of the two. In fact, it’s not really that bad. The only issue I have with the concept of flatpaks is that they statically link all or most of their dependencies and do not integrate well with the system. The obvious downside of statically linking dependencies is that flatpaks use a lot of disk space. A less obvious, but perhaps more serious disadvantage is that older versions of dependencies may lack securit…