Recently, Youtuber and Arch Linux user, Brodie Robertson has released a new video called “Be Careful With The AUR On Manjaro Linux”
Now let me be clear, this post isn’t intended to flame Manjaro, so please note if you’re going to disagree with a distro that is totally acceptable, but if you’re going to talk ill of a distro, the mods will probably act accordingly, so please be respectful and objective if you choose to comment. Now I am not a Manjaro fan myself, but when it’s your own hardware, you can do whatever you want with it, whatever distro that may be.
With that said, I do think Brodie brings up a lot of good objective points in this video, that probably most of the users here are already aware of, but this video is probably meant for users that may not be fully aware of the problems that the AUR can cause with Manjaro, so it’s good to shed a bit of light onto the matter. I think some of the points discussed in this video could be useful to know for users that are at that point thinking “which Arch-(based) distro is right for me?” so this could possibly be a useful link to some users.
As someone who ran Manjaro for quite some time I find things like this a bit…overstated?
I mean, sure, sometimes the libraries in Manjaro were older than what an AUR package would want and it wouldn’t update for a little bit. Ultimately, you could either wait, switch to testing/unstable or tweak the PKGBUILD.
I never found it to be some big dramatic event. In practice, it was never a huge deal for me.
@dalto I’ve not been a part of the Arch world for years like some users (though I do hope to have years under my belt one day!), but I do see various issues within the open source community brought up more frequently than some other issues. This was not an issue I saw all too often, but keep in mind I haven’t been around for a huge stretch of time either. I know there are quite a few current and former Manjaro users here in this community, so perhaps you all are already used to this “AUR situation” but this is kinda my first time really hearing about it in a well put together video, so I just found it useful.
I don’t think his aim in the video is to dissuade anyone from using Manjaro, he even says “it’s your system use it however you like” but as for myself, I saw this video as more of a “hey if you do use this distro, please just be careful if/when you MAY come across this issue.” I guess you’ve heard this brought up a lot already, so I’ll make a note of that in the future!
But in the meantime, objectively speaking, my main takeaway is: be careful using the AUR no matter what distro you are using
I think it was understated actually. He explained the AUR and how it uses Arch repos, but Manjaro uses Manjaro repos, not Arch repos. So, Manjaro is inherently broken if using the AUR, ESPECIALLY with pamac. Tweaking the package build isn’t something one generally does when using pamac. I would venture most Manjaro users use pamac. Which is built for Manjaro to use on Manjaro, not Arch, but. . . it does.
He did a great job explaining everything, I just think he was quite light on the warnings for Manjaro users as to why they shouldn’t be using it in general. It should be more stern and touched much more heavily on the user’s own impact and how they are part of the meltdown process.
Either way- a great video and I’ll definitely keep it on hand. LOTS of people ask what is so bad about pamac, and this is a great resource to give people at least a vague understanding to the disservice the program provides and the danger of using it - especially on Arch/Arch based as opposed to Manjaro based distros.
My first 2-3 months on EndeavourOS I was happy to use Pamac, I even recommended it from time to time in the beginning. I found it easy to use and useful for it’s many features. Now you can accomplish pretty much everything Pamac does via the CLI, so over time (even now for me), I’ve been transitioning my knowledge from relying less on a GUI for my system to being fully self sufficient in the terminal to run, maintain, and update my system.
I still think Pamac is a useful piece of software, but with the recent issues, a few of them mentioned in the video, I no longer recommend Pamac, mostly because I like to only recommend things when I use them or stand by them. Pamac having issues may not be ideal for it’s reputation in the short term, but if it’s any consolation, their issues have propelled me to learn more so I can function more confidently in the terminal.
I hope Pamac devs don’t cause any further issues and I only hope they can improve their software since I know a lot of users do use it, Manjaro or otherwise. But for myself, I use the terminal 90% of the time now and I wouldn’t have gone that route if it hadn’t been for Pamac. It’s a bit bittersweet, but that’s how the house of cards fall sometimes.
Last month, when I completely shifted from Windows to Linux world( EndeavourOS ) , I was not aware of Pamac until few days ago. I first knew about it here by studying some discussions here on forum.
For the first time, I thought that Pamac and Pacman are same thing as they sound same, and roughly I meant pacman as PAC(kage)-MAN(ager).
Without having any idea of using CLI in past as I was on Windows before last month,
to the present situation, where I use CLI to do all those software related things and system updates/downgrade, its a good plus for users like me.
For this I want to thank EndeavourOS development team, and many experienced users here like @dalto , @pebcak , @Pudge ( as these three teachers provided me some basic commands in my initial times ) whose central idea helped me to learn the new ability of using terminal for many things.
As of now, I am still very beginner here, hence, I will continue to learn new knowledge here by studying ideas of the experienced members here, who post their views on various topics, and also try to understand their thought process on the specific issues by asking them as a student.
I have been saying the same thing for a very - very long time - these are only recent examples.
It is great that someone finally picked up on it and I sincerely hope this will make new Manjaro users walk more careful when it comes to custom packages - built using AUR on stable branch.
The issue with Pamac and AUR is not only Manjaro users - but the popularity of Arch derivatives whether this is Manjaro, Garuda, EndeavourOS - when the user decided they want a GUI for package management - they go for Pamac - simply because it is the best.
The immense popularity of Pamac is also it’s weakness - the AUR helper kind of weakness.
AUR wasn’t designed for the that usecase - and when they tried to mitigate by giving the webservice a complete overhaul - implementing an archive with info - it just created another problem - traffic - an enourmous amount of traffic.
Manjaro has changed the way people uses Arch - for better or worse - I cannot say - but what Manjaro does to work with Arch to mitigate the popularity of AUR is great.
Pamac has been changed so the AUR archive db and headers is distributed using CDN77 - so if any of you are using Pamac - just FYI - it will most likely use https://aur.manjaro.org
I believe it’s gif version rip-off from Telegram’s stickers called Honka by @MrSnowball, if you’re a telegram user there are bots which convert stickers to gifs
My understanding is ongoing, so I’m still processing some of the information linked above, but from what I have gathered with the links @Root mentioned, I found a comment from @philmmanjaro (Manjaro dev) stating:
I’ve created a mirror of packages.gz and packages-meta-ext-v1.json.gz on https://aur.manjaro.org using our CDN77 storage solution. So the files are now available every 5 minutes and get downloaded from AUR server only when changed there. This brings more than 64 datacenters around the globe providing that file. Manjaro may change the URL to that one with the next Pamac update.
That was also my thought - but is not a viable solution.
I think the solution which has been worked out - is the best outcome - but discussion what Manjaro should or should not do - is not the topic.
The topic just confirms what I have been saying for years - maybe You even remember my rant which spread like wildfire because it was posted in announcements (perhaps You can locate it if I tell You it was topic number 30565.
linux-aarhus | 2020-10-09 15:24:53 UTC | #1
I took the time to watch the video and the information he provides is rephrased from my topics spiced with rubbish that Pamac is badly coded.
No Pamac is not badly coded - Pamac suffered from some ancient design choices on aurweb which caused the outage - but it is far more convenient to punk Manjaro - than to realise that the Manjaro team has been working with Arch for more than a year with these optimizations.
It is under pressure you discover a weakness.
A tremendous amount of work has gone into strengthening the Arch aurweb infrastructure - and should I need to remind You - You all benefit from this.
The latest improvements is that Arch gets the aur archive database published using CDN77 which is an increased availability for all Pamac users - including EndeavourOS.
I do not agree with the conclusion this guy is making in his video. I was using Manjaro for years with the AUR and I did not have issues with the AUR. He claims that “if you are a Manjaro user keep in mind that the AUR is not made for you”. I totally disagree with that statement. It is exaggerated.
Yes, there have been problems with pamac and the AUR. But that is a pamac issue. If you use yay or paru or any other AUR helper you are fine with manjaro and AUR.
Looks like this guy wanted to create some clicks for his channel.
They get a cheap spin and a story - there is so many who love to hate Manjaro.
I don’t have any bad experience either - but both you and I and many other are experienced users - and an experienced user know what to look out for.
The majority jump Windows → Manjaro → AUR on stable branch → and then the circus open.
The difference between Arch and Manjaro stable can often be a leap - lately with the glibc update which triggered many issues on Manjaro forum - because of that leap.
Pamac is not a bad app - IMO - just like Manjaro has disabled downgrade on stable branch (unless you use an env variable) the same should be done for AUR - to keep the worst incidents from happening.
Pamac is a victim of it’s own success - and Manjaro’s success.
I maintain Manjaro Xfce on my girlfriend’s machine because she is not as interested as I am and Manjaro is more convenient for her. For me I consider Manjaro as plan B, if it should not run sometime with EndeavourOS more so (and I am then still alive …). Above I wrote, it was already said everything to Manjaro - let’s leave it at that … The developers of M. do a good job .
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