DISCLAIMER: Arch Linux is not a beginner friendly distribution, and this is not a recommendation or good practice.

I know how to use pacman -S. I have yet to experience a Discover related issue after months of use.

The original image gives me strong "Shepard, Tali, and Garrus doing shenanigans" vibes.

Did pacman get packagekit support or are we just talking about flatpaks here?

Arch Wiki has still this warning

Warning

As explained in a GitHub comment by a Package Maintainer, "Handling system packages via packagekit is just fundamentally incompatible with our high-maintenance rolling release distro, where any update might leave the system in an unbootable or otherwise unusable state if the user does not take care reading pacman's logs or merging pacnew files before rebooting."

So, were talking about flatpaks.

It has been working for a while, but it's not recommended

I'm not an expert, but I thought on Arch you are specifically not supposed to use the discover store because it can cause partial updates which can in turn cause major problems.

However, the point still stands, pacman and the AUR are easy and have nearly everything.

So its less about lack of packagekit support in pacman and more about lack of manual intervention features in GUI software managers?

Thank you for the clarification

It should be “yay [wanted program]” instead of “KDE discovery” in my opinion

You can use it for Flatpaks which works great for a lot of people.

Eh. I haven't had issues for a few months and I back up my files on a weekly basis and -Syu once or twice a month. Worst case scenario, I'll just reinstall and restore from backup.

Also, I mainly use Discover for high level stuff like browsers and IDEs.

it is more about arch's philosy being your system may not boot next update, happens pretty much no where else, except windows, manjaro and sometimes ubuntu

As a Debian slut this level of sweating over updates is wild to me.

My last Fedora version upgrade was a test of my troubleshooting skills, for sure.

Yeah but imagine reading about a new release of something and it appearing in your updates the same day. Shiny new software every day is addicting.

Yay -S "Am I a joke for you?"

The AUR is a great resource but it's also being sold as a package repository users don't need to actively think about or understand. I honestly think malware is going to be much more common on the AUR if we aren't careful.

Octopi is a decent compromise: https://linuxvox.com/blog/octopi-linux/

Flatpak just working would be a nice thing. Everytime I try they fuck something new up...

(Last time I thought about installing Steam via Flatpak on Arch to get rid of all the multilib 32bit stuff not needed for aynthing else anymore it worked for nearly 4 days. Then flatpak update randomly uninstalled its nvidia drivers because an "update" removing the old package first, then realizing it can't find the new one make total sense of course.)

On the flip side, reading about an exploited vulnerability in a package and then realizing your machine isn't affected because Debian has an outdated package in it's repo

How did they fuck up so badly that ending? Ahhhhhh

Does yay integrate with flatpack and snap?

Imagine being so inept that you can't use a terminal to install a terminal-based update. Arch users are posers and script kiddies and need to STFU

Fun hobby you have spreading negativity on lemmy.

pacman -S app

Installing something on arch is easy imo. The CLI is simple and well enough documented, and the package build system is easy to use. For comparison with ubuntu: pacman -S name is not harder than apt install name. And try to install something on ubuntu if it's not in the official package repos.

I get where most comments saying to use pacman or yay but it's not a good idea to install everything with terminal. Also KDE discover uses flathub and into bazaar is a better client for it.

I work with computers all day, I don't want to work when I come home lol.

Yep

You're not wrong. That said my broke ass can't afford cutting edge hardware so most of the time it doesn't matter.

When it does, I can usually compensate with either a NixOs profile install, a container of some sort (or Flatpak), or just building the emefferr from source.

Why the hell would I want snap?

I've just been using yay, what does the -S do am I missing something important?

Paru

-S, --sync

Synchronize packages. Packages are installed directly from the remote repositories, including all dependencies required to run the packages.

you need to run pacman -S sense-of-humor

Wait, I am supposed to care about .pacnew files?

Anyway, so far all I found there is new optional dependencies.
I rather wonder what happens when manual intervention is needed, like when JDK started being in conflict with JRE.

I keep hearing this claim online but the Arch bible (which you really should be familiar with if you use Arch) and pretty much everyone that knows anything will tell you that the AUR is useful, but not something to blindly use. I recommend everyone check the PKGBUILD, verify the source URLs are correct, and check the diffs when updating. It's not that much effort.

And since it comes from a single (user) package repository, you'll probably have hundreds of people doing the same, or even going a step or two further and looking into the code, reporting the package if anything bad is going on. Still miles better than downloading .exe files you find from a Google search, even if you were lazy and didn't do the aforementioned checks. (But if you don't do that, you should probably just use Flatpaks or similar.)

If I learned anything with Steam it's to never install it as a Flatpak.

All official resources, Arch maintainers and high quality guides have been putting a ton of effort into teaching people how to use the AUR safely. That hasn't stopped some people, even back before Arch got really popular, but you can't reach everyone. Alternative package managers and pacman wrappers made the AUR a lot more accessible, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there are good reasons for all the caution. Combine that with Arch increasing in popularity and getting picked up by all the shitty influencers and you get a lot of people ,who don't know what they're doing, installing everything from the AUR with their CLI/GUI of choice. Then you've got Arch derivatives making AUR packages easily accessible from the start, bad advice on places like reddit etc.

Long story short: it seems that over the years whenever I check in, users that barely know how it works are happily installing random shit from random people on the AUR because they saw it in a YT video or something.

Downvotes you already have, so I will restrict myself to explaining:

• CLI is the only way I've ever installed anything in a Linux OS. Has served me well for a decade or more
• doing stuff without knowing what you are doing is going to land you in a mess, no matter how hard GUI tool devs are trying to prevent that

Lol. Imagine being so inept that you can't imagine anyone preferring GUI over CLI

That makes sense, but what's the alternative here? Linux is freedom, so that means freedom to run / install anything you want, including malware if you're not careful. Maybe if you discourage people from using the AUR, they will install it through other means, like a developer-provided Flatpak or AppImage. But if that's not available or doesn't work, then it's nothing (= sad user), or you're back to "Google, then download an .exe the first thing you can run" or just curl | sh. Is that better? (Assuming we're still talking about the kind of people who would skip vetting what they install.)

AUR pkgbuild files are basically just bash scripts. You can integrate them with anything.

Wow look. It's the reason that linux market share is as low as it fucking is.

Like dude, maybe people can use the terminal just fine but prefer the GUI. What if having the GUI it really opens up accessibility to less technically competent users And promotes adoption of the OS across the board?

What if using this GUI leads to users using the terminal for more complex tasks? Have you ever thought of that??

Or are you too busy being some elitist snob in your basement?

I mean, yeah that would be my solution. I get that the AUR is attractive, precisely because it has a low barrier for anyone to submit their PKGBUILD. The level of oversight and verification is just a bit too low to recommend it to an average user, without a lot of caution. You've mentioned some alternatives that fall on different points along the spectrum of delivering software. Something like flatpak is a much more reliable tool in the hands of someone who just wants a GUI app and not think about how it gets to their desktop. For everything else that isn't part of your distros repositories, there's really not a good noob-friendly solution that doesn't carry a big potential risk. Most distros have third-party repositories that use the same underlying tools to deliver software, but are less strict about QA and stuff. This is kind of a bad fit for rolling release distros in my opinion and is probably one of the reasons the AUR is so hands-off and DIY oriented.

There's probably a better way to handle this, but I don't think it's an easy thing to solve (especially for the rolling release model) and the AUR isn't really appropriate for mass-consumption by average users. Also, there will always be a certain point beyond which you're on your own, it's just not feasible to have reliable, safe, distro-agnostic packaging for every piece of software out there.

Technically correct answer but not super helpful imo.
yay <package name> starts a search from which you enter your selection(s) from matches. yay -S <package name> installs the package directly, errors if it's not found

Top notch logic here. Driving a car without knowing the inner workings of the car will land you in a mess.

Care to explain why it's not a good idea to tell your computer "install this package" in a CLI format?

Ah yes, arch users, who famously hate the terminal