You’re not wrong, but then we ought to pump the brakes in telling everyone and their mother to hop onto arch based distros that make installing AUR packages seem as safe as any other action (via Shelly on cachyos for example)
To be fair, the advice very rarely is for people to jump onto Arch based distros.
The problem is more that the Arch value proposition kinda presupposes the sort of user that's going to "feel superior" about having it installed[0]. It leads to people that have no business installing Arch Linux (as it doesn't match their usecase) installing Arch Linux because it makes them feel cool.
I don't have a good answer for this, besides making it more apparent what people should expect from having Arch installed. My recommendation usually goes something like this:
* Do you want to have the latest version of all software, regardless of the question if it's well-tested beforehand?
* Do you want to have all software distributed in an as-close-to-upstream approach as possible? Be aware that "upstream" configuration can sometimes significantly differ from defaults most people expect. (Sometimes there's reasons for this, sometimes upstream are a bunch of obstinate jerks.)
* Are you comfortable with a terminal?
* Are you comfortable with needing to suddenly learn how to troubleshoot a broken system after a routine update?
Only if the answer to all of those is "yes", then Arch is suitable for you.
And finally, more specific to servers, where the answer should be "no" if you want to use arch:
* Do you have the expectation to never have to touch the OS after it's been configured correctly besides routine maintenance (ie. installing security updates) and maybe a big update twice a year?
I used to use Arch, before realizing that my system was gradually morphing into a bespoke mess that didn't really serve my needs and that while doing something very specific was possible, I also had to configure a bunch of mundane stuff you aren't normally required to think about - there's never a "just install, activate and adjust as needed" with Arch. All I actually wanted was a distro with more recent software than "3 years old" (Debian/Ubuntu's sluggish package inclusion is not really useful for desktops).
So I looked around and realized Fedora worked better for me: professional, clean, recent software (every 9 months updates, feature freezes are smart enough to account for ie. New Python releases) and not prone to sudden surprises.
To be honest, it took me way too long to figure the Arch etc crowd are hobbyists who enjoy having something which always 'needs maintenance' over the weekend. (And maybe they don't want to admit they are hobbyists because what they are doing seems Very Important.)
Sorta like 'car guys' who recommend some old thing you can wrench on.
For what it is worth, while I'm sure it is right on target for some, I think that's incorrect model of a mean arch user. Updates are once a month thing for me (and the maintenance for that rarely exceeds 10m if that). I barely do any distro level tinkering, after all, I need to spare some time to improve my emacs config ;).
Basically, my model of a mean arch user would be closer to a DIYer -- likes to follow clear manual instructions, likes sturdy and non-ephemeral things, likes to know what the sausage is made of, but prefers if maintenance costs are minimized (since they will be bearing those costs and are responsible for the thing), so makes choices according to that.
Hey, your response improves my opinion of 'car guys'. Because the analogy is thin and they are looking directly at what is coming out of the 'sausage machine'. And if the result is good, they could sell the machine for profits! (Unlike computer nerds.)
I'm sticking with "hobbyists/dabblers" here, because almost nobody runs Arch in real production scenarios. Its just a fun high-touch thing people can enjoy fucking around with. Nothing wrong with that.
(That is why someone could trivially trojan hundreds of packages and it's NBD. Because "Nobody Cares." Wipe it and start over, funguy.)
Honestly, it's hard to see how Arch is a usable distro for most potential users without AUR. If you want a large selection of official packages, the Debian world is going to be the better choice.
Obviously usages vary greatly, but I doubt it's that of big deal for majority of Arch users (maybe it's different for Arch derived distros). My AUR maintained package count has been in single digits for decades (both on my home PC and work station), and I don't think it as a heavy burden to update those packages.
There's a certain selection bias going on here -- I drop AUR packages if they become too annoying (if they require updates too frequently or they want a slew of other AUR only packages as dependencies), I either find alternatives or alternative sources for them (e.g. flathub).
Arch still hits the sweet spot for me -- unobtrusive, close to upstream, and well-documented enough to keep full control over your own system. Both for the times when you want to go with the most default path and for the cases when you want to deviate and go play in the weeds.
I think the issue with AUR is that you get your foot in the door with packages like spotify[1]. It does its magic to allow you to install a .deb package on your distro. I don't know how else to install the Spotify desktop app without AUR. But once you're willing to do that, why not go a little further and trust other packages?
Now, someone could argue that the Spotify app isn't important, but there's a reason it has 268 votes. A better solution would be having packages like spotify in their own repo, and a separate, you-better-verify repo for the rest.
I don't have it installed, so I can't comment if it requires constant babysitting, but looks pretty okay to me -- it has no AUR-only dependencies (++), one extra shell script (--), popular (++ given enough eyeballs...). Should be fairly easy to review, anything fishy should be fairly visible in git diff. If I needed it I would be using this PKGBUILD. It's a net gain that it exists there, someone else done most of the work for me.
> Now, someone could argue that the Spotify app isn't important, but there's a reason it has 268 votes. A better solution would be having packages like spotify in their own repo, and a separate, you-better-verify repo for the rest.
I mean yeah, but everything is trade off of volunteer + user attention. There is no trusted user™ who uses spotify, so it's not in official packages. So you as user need to maintain it yourself or rely on AUR and verify.
That is not true, there are plenty of non-FOSS packages in extra/multilib (e.g steam, discord, nvidia). The only criteria is if there is an interested packager to maintain it.
>The large number of packages and build scripts in the various Arch Linux repositories offer free and open source software for those who prefer it, as well as proprietary software packages for those who embrace functionality over ideology.
On the bright side you can get quite far without the AUR.
I have 1,135 packages installed. Only 3 top level packages are from the AUR and 2 of those 3 are from the same author, they just happened to split their packages into a client / server architecture.
This is similar to my situation with Gentoo. Across my Gentoo systems, I have exactly one package installed from an "overlay" [0], and that's Steam. Everything else is straight out of the official package tree.
[0] ...which is -IIRC- Gentoo's term for a user-provided and entirely-unvetted collection of packages...
Installed CachyOS to replace my Win 10 installation a month ago. Not looking back! But yeah this sucks, I've mostly used Ubuntu with apt in the past. Pacman and makepkg felt a bit weird to use in the beginning.
IIRC, Bell ended up wanting to spend his life after inventing the telephone as a scientist and a researcher, rather than tending to the running of Bell Telephone and AT&T.
Well, it's a (usually believed for nationality reasons) myth that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
In reality, it was the German "Philipp Reis" who invented it. In Friedrichsdorf he made the first prototype and also invented the special (coal based) contact microphone used in phones ~ 1990. He demoed the prototype in 1861 before the physical society in Frankfurt/Main.
Later on he sold phones in quite low quantity, usually to experimenters. Examples of the phones made it as far as to Russia or Scotland. Bell, who was too from Scotland, learned about Reis' telephone in Edinburgh in 1862.
Bell reverse-engineered it, improved it, and created a successful business around it. And that's not something shabby...
... but he definitely didn't invent it. Not even the name. "Telephon" was the name that Philipp Reis already used.
Yep. And it doesn't help that the people selling AI products act as if they're going to build God. Going, "well AI can't do that" isn't going to fly when you are lax about communicating its limitations!
It also doesn't help when the messaging is linked to how "there will be no jobs where you use your brain anymore everything will be automated". What motivation does the average 16 year old have to try hard and learn anything beyond what they immediately need.
No jobs, ai Jesus is coming, and if you use ai it will use all of the worlds compute power to try to convince you it's correct even when it's not.
I love Orwell, he ranks as one of my favorite writers, especially his non-fiction. Unfortunately, I think too many writers take his famed writing advice as doctrine, and ignore the possibilies of a richer and more elaborate style.
In my opinion, Orwell had already wrestled with and composed a coherent philosophy. His writing style was a tool to articulate his philosophy and viewpoint.
Those who are still formulating their thoughts and putting it down on paper will come across as incoherent no matter which writing style they adopt.
I knew vaguely that Troy had many layers of settlement, but I didn't realize that Troy had an extensive life in antiquity that extended into the classical Greek age (Post-Bronze Age) and Early Roman Age. It's funny to think of Roman and Greek Tourists visiting Troy VIII in 300 BC.
When I visited Troy, the museum's trojan horse replica said "Under Construction". Apparently it had been that way for months and months, which was pretty funny considering the original took only 3 days.
IIRC, the Inuit reached North America from the West right about the time the Vikings reached it from the East, but they managed to colonize and stay, displacing the native inhabitants and eventually spreading to Greenland, again displacing the natives. Their technological advantages were their kayaks and hunting strategies, so presumably the displacement was less violent.
"The final layers (Troy VIII–IX) were Greek and Roman cities which served as tourist attractions and religious centers because of their link to mythic tradition."
Yes, definitely. There was tourism in Greece in the Classical Period, too. Epidaurus is a good example: a major religious sanctuary, side by side with a theatre and athletics venues, all part of the thriving local economy propped up entirely by tourism. Fun fact: history's first recorded hypochondriac was a frequent patient/visitor at the temple of Asclepius in Epidaurus.
according to medieval reports the white limestone surfaces of the pyramids were absolutely cluttered with Egyptian Roman and other in eligible graffiti
It seems that a major objective of Judaism’s monotheism and singular Temple complex was predicated on being “A Light to All Nations” and a central, exclusive focus for pilgrimage (and therefore, economic activity) during the Jewish feasts.
In fact this is exactly the same situation which drives pro-Israel sentiment in modern times: pilgrimage == tourism == $$$.
no, but in first century bc and after that the roman world was connected enough that rich young romans were doing their version of the grand tour. Cesar managed to be kidnapped by pirates doing something like that, if I remember it correctly.
I read something about the Sphinx in Egypt suggesting that modern excavations came to the conclusion that at least one Ancient Egyptian dynasty probably excavated it trying to figure out the history of it as well
The oldest written text that definitely refers to it is the Dream Stele by Thutmose IV, which describes him having it dug free of sand. The monument was more than a thousand years old at that point.
Young kings showing their piety by restoring old monuments was useful royal propaganda. This wasn't even the last time that the Sphinx was restored.
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