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.

  • Twongo [she/her]@lemmy.ml
    172·
    4 days ago

    why do people get intimidated by installing an arch package?

    i recently wanted to play morrowind and i use the terminal like a search engine for programs. i just typed “yay openmw” and voila it was there, checked in the aur if the package is clean and installed it by clicking enter 3 times.

    and i thout “yay _ that was easy! :3”, got off a ship in seyda neen and killed fargoth with my bare fists as soon as i locked eyes with him.

  • bequirtle@lemmy.world
    235·
    4 days ago

    IME, KDE Discover and similar app stores are so unreliable, telling beginners to use them is akin to harmful misinformation

    If you need a GUI software manager, my suggestion is to not use arch

    • Nalivai@lemmy.world
      53·
      4 days ago

      If you need a GUI software manager, my suggestion is to not use arch

      Arch is actually great for beginners, way better than usual alternatives like Ubuntu for example. If you need a GUI software manager, Arch or Arch derivatives are still better than a lot of the rest.
      Besides, a lot of people like fancy GUIs, nothing wrong with that. You’re right that graphic app stores aren’t amazing, but that’s shouldn’t be the norm then. I will still do everything in CLI, but I will vehemently defend our less technically advanced bretheren’s right to click their mouse on the colourful buttons

      • bequirtle@lemmy.world
        41·
        4 days ago

        To be clear I’m not against GUI software managers, just had bad experiences with KDE Discover… and I don’t trust anyone who recommends Arch for beginners…

        If you never want to see a terminal just use Mint or whatever

        • Nalivai@lemmy.world
          2·
          3 days ago

          I’m talking from experience both in education and sysadmin duties. In my life I helped hundreds of people switch to Linux, for work, for home, for everything in between, and was that helpful person that answers all their questions. I have the statistics, however informal, I know what I’m talking about. There are whole categories of problems that people encounter with Ubuntu and it’s derivatives that just categorically don’t exist in Arch. And you can trust whatever the fuck you want.

      • ulterno@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        I am pretty much, “for GUI” and tend to make enough KIO servicemenus to make my right click menu looong.

        But after trying out both GUI and CLI methods of managing software installation, I’d say I am inclined on using the CLI for this task.

      • ekZepp@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        5 days ago

        -S, --sync

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

        • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          6·
          4 days ago

          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

  • Brokkr@lemmy.world
    15·
    5 days ago

    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.

    • anyhow2503@lemmy.world
      17·
      5 days ago

      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.

      • copygirl@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        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.)

        • anyhow2503@lemmy.world
          5·
          5 days ago

          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.

          • copygirl@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            1·
            5 days ago

            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.)

            • anyhow2503@lemmy.world
              2·
              4 days ago

              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.

    • MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.worldOP
      5·
      5 days ago

      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.

        • TheOneCurly@feddit.onlineEnglish
          8·
          5 days ago

          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.

          • sudoMakeUser@sh.itjust.works
            3·
            5 days ago

            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

          • Monstrosity@lemmy.today
            2·
            5 days ago

            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.

        • NathanUp@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          4 days ago

          IMO it’s overblown. If you even have an issue at all, 99.99% of the time it’s user error. And to mitigate that, you just use timeshift with BTRFS and snapshots on GRUB.

  • rtxn@lemmy.worldM
    9·
    5 days ago

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

  • one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 days ago

    I had issues with btrfs-assistant. It’s a permissions thing, tho. Might work if I added myself as an administrator, but I like the security of needing sudo, so pacman version it is.

  • meow@discuss.tchncs.de
    411·
    4 days ago

    Im sorry for all actual arch users, who are contrary to all stereotypes, not posers. If you feel the need to use Arch, and then use kde discover, or any other gui, and flatpak based installers, why are you using it in the first place?

    The CLI way, and btw the ACTUAL way the devs intended to install mainstream software for YOUR distro, is legitimately far less hard than any of you make it seem like.

    So, if you plan on using your distro correctly, and plan on stability, use your lovely package manager, or switch. You can get a rolling release distro everywhere else too, you can change every system file, everywhere else, you can change your fucking fast-/neofetch output, if you need to.

    Just use a distro that is for your skill level.

    Btw its:

    Pacman, and then -S for install, -y for your repos, and -u is for updates.

    So do me a favor and dont try to suffer.

    Thanks for reading my mindless babbling and weird, maybe even contradictory logic, have fun :3

    • LwL@lemmy.world
      101·
      4 days ago

      Having steam installed both ways was the easiest way to be logged in to 2 steam accounts simultaneously.

      But also why does it matter, the whole point of arch is that you can turn it into whatever the hell you want. If that means using discover as your main source for programs, then so be it.

    • xyguy@startrek.websiteEnglish
      4·
      4 days ago

      I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

      Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

      There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux

      • meow@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        4 days ago

        I couldn’t find anywhere where I referred to Linux, also, Linux is, as you said, the kernel, and there are actual Distributions that do not use any GNU software (see Alpine, Chinera, LFS, Gentoo, etc.). Assuming, that every Linux-kernel based operating system is using GNU software is wrong, and for your wonderful Copypasta a thing to consider adding :3

        Meow

    • MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      4 days ago

      Mainly due to senior coworker influence lmao. I’m planning to VM some other KDE distros soon, but Arch is good enough for now, haven’t had much more than minor nuisances.

      also, I know pacman -Syu. That’s my second-most-used command (after yt-dlp)

  • Hiro8811@lemmy.world
    110·
    5 days ago

    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.

    • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
      61·
      5 days ago

      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
      • Hiro8811@lemmy.world
        21·
        4 days ago

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

        • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
          12·
          4 days ago

          And it will. Why do you think they explained to me how car works long before I ever sat in a driver’s seat?

    • Fokeu@lemmy.zip
      1·
      4 days ago

      I’m installing everything on terminal since I began using Linux. Where is the bad thing in that?

      • Hiro8811@lemmy.world
        1·
        4 days ago

        Nothing wrong with CLI, you can use it to install from flathub. I’m saying it’s not a good idea from a security standpoint. Yay uses user repository and pacman has root permissions. For example installing wine with pacman will allow access to the whole disk

        • ruby@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          1·
          4 days ago

          installing wine with pacman doesn’t allow any special access. if you run it, then it gets access to whatever the user who ran it has access to. whether you installed it with pacman or a gui wrapper doesn’t matter.