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Comment by beej71 | Hacker News Reader

There's some big stuff in AUR like the binary VS Code and Chrome, fwiw.

I wouldn't those programs. You have the corresponding FOSS versions (code-oss and chromium) in the main repository. Chrome is basically spyware.

I'm on Kubuntu and I install VS Code using Microsoft's repo and Chrome using Google's repo. Also I do Wine and Docker using their own repos. I can't imagine VS Code or even Chrome being put into the mainstream Kubuntu/Ubuntu repos nor why such a burden should ever be shifted to Canonical.

Since you are using the official repos thats not an issue. The issue is when the package creator is some rando on the internet.

That’s because you’re using something those companies officially support. Is your argument everyone running Linux needs to be on a Debian-based or Fedora-based distribution?

Btw the official “vscode on Linux” instructions literally point to the community maintained AUR (same for nix).

The truth of the matter is the AUR is poorly maintained structurally, regardless of what companies officially support. Things like letting arbitrary people unilaterally take over orphaned packages is horrendously stupid.

Stupid or rather low-friction on purpose?

Both. And that's an even worse combo, making stupidity frictionless.

Stupidly low friction. Consistently failing to learn from the mistakes of package managers is bad enough. Failing to learn from your own is another level.

“Learning from your mistakes is good. Learning from the mistakes of others is better”.

For all its flaws, at least Cargo attempts to do that. AUR does not. No other package manager this regularly has hijacking problems.

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