Ask HN: Is anyone else leaving AUR? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is anyone else leaving AUR?

8 pointslordkrandel7 comments

I'm spending a lot of my time removing AUR packages for alternatives in the official Archlinux repositories.

I've shifted from Dropbox to RClone, from acpilight to brightnessctl, from spotify to spotify-launcher and so on.

Has anyone else having the same trust problem? Also, how do you stay updated with the situation?

I work in a corporate environment and malware is a no-go.

Yeah, I've been trying to get away from the AUR too. Besides switching to alternatives from the main repo like you, I've also been using AppImage, Flatpak, brew and cargo. I think the only main AUR package remaining for me (not counting dependencies) is chawan-git.

As for keeping updated on the situation, I've been following the news in the Arch Linux discord and the Github page which had the AUR malware scanning script.

Thank you very much! I've found alternatives or removed about 30 packages. The only AppImage I have is Librewolf, no Flatpaks.

Might be fun to do if you are unemployed, but since you've mentioned a job it's better to just read the install script for the high level overview then install it manually.

The general idea is to find a small set of programs, in a more supported set that serves your usecase. So you learn more about a smaller number of programs. Downside is that you are now able to rewrite your entire system in a single language.

I've succesfully uninstalled yay and removed all the packages, and am still employed. Most were zombies and stuff that could be replaced. Rest is from Arch main repos.

I think you overreact. Sure there were a few hundreds of compromised packages, but obviously it's a small percentage of all AUR. Maybe also some of them were really popular like Dropbox, but still you can check.

What's wrong with Dropbox?

It's installed from AUR, which has been compromised.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Arch-Linux-AUR-400-Compromised

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dropbox

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