I wanted to introduce myself, I’ve dabbled off and on with Linux over 20 years basically installing and checking how feasibile / user friendly it would be to use a daily driver/replacement. Over the years my time was spent with openSUSE/Slack/Ubuntu/Mandrake, more so with the green Chameleon than the others.
I am by no means an expert - not even intermediate, not a beginner but somewhere in between - I am a pretty quick learner. I migrated fully to linux about a month ago using openSUSE (love it) and was experimenting with various distros through VM. Tried Arch - it was definitely interesting but I honestly was not a fan of the installation method, their Discord/Reddit/Forums are a bit hit or miss interms of friendliness (RTFM etc) which essentially drove me away from it. The Wiki while good in most aspects generally feels as though it expects you to have an underlying foundation with linux - resulting in me cross, cross, and cross checking multiple wiki’s to execute a command or what have you.
Anyway - I did like the concept behind Arch and figured it would be a good way to learn a bit more of how Linux works and get acclimated to CLI. I landed on Endeavour as it takes some of the complexity out of the equation and gives a solid base to work with - I essentially stared at my screen post login figuring out the best way to install things which is already different than OS (YaST or Zypper).
Onto my questions! I tried searching the forums - but I guess i’m not typing it correctly…
1.) Is there a way to see the repos my system is using? I ask because I hear Arch Repo’s for pacman tend to have a lot of goodies but i am not sure if thats what I am using when running pacman or is it defaulting to Endeavour repos?
2.) I’ve had to leverage AUR for a few apps and I really don’t want to use it except as a last resort. I guess my alternative would be to build a package?
3.) Building a package would involve me having to continually “build” it every update? Or would pacman “take” over ? (ie I build it once, and it gets maintained by the system?)
Unlike other distros, you don’t really need to add or remove 3rd party repos. You can look in /etc/pacman.conf to see what repos you have enabled. You should have both the Arch repos and the EndeavouOS repos enabled. The EOS repo has a minimal amount of software, most of it comes from the Arch repos.
The dangers of the AUR are mostly overstated. As long as you are reviewing the PKGBUILDs you should have no problems.
If you create a PKGBUILD you can automate the process with makepkg and then install the resultant package via pacman. However, in most cases it would be easier just to review the existing PKGBUILDs from the AUR unless you want something custom.
As someone who is new to Linux, I completely understand your worries about the AUR. However, I believe the less packages you install the better it will be for you to maintain and manage your system.
Also, make sure when downloading AUR packages that, the package in question isn’t several years old and is actively being maintained/updated.
Lastly I’d reccomend using the AKM/kernel package manager and installing LTS kernel as a backup in case anything does break. Or, you could do what I do and use the LTS kernel as the main kernel as it’s said to be more stable than the most recent rolling release of Arch Linux kernels.
I did install several packages off the AUR that are a few days old (late August was the last update) so I’m assuming the maintainer will update it soon.
As far as the LTS kernel, I did read about it and need to look into how to accomplish this. On openSUSE i was running 5.3 on Leap 15.2 and it was stable - but I did hear that there are some more goodies in the 5.7 and upcoming 5.8 for AMD processors. I will make a backup of the LTS, so thank you for that direction and insight!
Few days is nothing to be concerned about (well I wouldn’t be, dependent on the type of package) I was thinking more along the lines of months and months old lol.
To accomplish install of LTS kernel in terminal do:
sudo pacman -S Linux-lts linux-lts-headers
Or click on the kernel manager (AKM) on the welcome window of EOS and you can download it from there.
Either one of these methods will then allow you to boot into LTS kernel via GRUB
Really appreciate the inline responses! Interesting on the 3rd party repos as that was going to be my next question - usually on OS I add Nvidia/Google/pacman for the goodies - I noticed when installing ms-ttf-fonts it just worked fine.
Yeah the AUR warnings are what I came across from the Reddit community, I can understand some of the trepidiation but they stated the same, watch what you install. I think I maybe have 5 AUR installs and thats about it.
yay has options that will either let you review the whole PKGBUILD or just the diffs since the last version.
The PKGBUILD lets you easily see exactly what will be built and/or installed prior to it happening. You can also see where it is coming from.
The AUR is far safer than most 3rd party repos. If you poke around a little you can find some topics here that explain why. If you can’t find them, let me know and I will link them in.
I tried using the Kernel option and I got this error - I encountered a similar error installing another package complaining about the PGP keys. I had to use another keyserver to get an app to install. I did receive a newsletter about newer PGP keys but I don’t know what to do with them (and it was from July) so I figured the ISO would be updated since then.
Proceed with installation? [Y/n]
:: Retrieving packages…
downloading akm-2.5-1-any.pkg.tar.zst…
checking keyring…
downloading required keys…
:: Import PGP key 003DB8B0CB23504F, “EndeavourOS info@endeavouros.com”? [Y/n] error: key “003DB8B0CB23504F” could not be looked up remotely
error: required key missing from keyring
error: failed to commit transaction (unexpected error)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.
Finished.
Hmmm I have no idea what that error means… I was able to install the LTS kernel no problems (can’t remember if I did through AKM or terminal though) Hopefully someone much more knowledgeable than me will have a solution.
Only solution I can think of is try installing LTS directly from terminal using the above command I posted, rather than through the manager.
I have no idea what that error means… I was able to install the LTS kernel no problems (can’t remember if I did through AKM or terminal though) Hopefully someone much more knowledgeable than me will have a solution.