"there aren't nearly as many packages in the repos/AUR as X distro"

iphitus · 2008-01-27 08:06:30

I still hear this about Arch. I'm really curious to find out what software I'm missing out on. Arch/AUR seems to have almost everything except the most obscure software -- and I remember installing some of that by hand when I used Debian.

So...

What are we missing?
What and how many other distros have it?
Of what significance is it?
Are there any large areas where we are weak?

James

ps: Someone who posted in the last few days might find that topic familiar, yes I did quote you.

tlaloc · 2008-01-27 08:35:40

I don't know, since I never missed a thing. In times of need, this tiny ABS-gadget will probably do the trick.:D

jdhore · 2008-01-27 09:01:05

I know, it's me you're quoting.

There are a few things i think Arch is lacking...First, a set of small KDE packages. I use Kopete as my IM client on my GNOME desktop because i despise Pidgin (it's missing a few things i consider essential), but on Arch, there's no way to install Kopete without installing at least the KDENetwork package that has a bunch of crap i don't need/want. KDEMod has individual packages, but if i wanted something like Yakuake which is in the Arch repos, but not the KDEMod repo, i have to go through dependency hell a bit. (Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, FreeBSD and CentOS all have the 3 metapackages...KDE (EVERYTHING KDE), kdenetwork (the kdenetwork metapackage) and all the kdenetwork sub-packages split out)

Really, that's the only instance of "not as many packages" i've found in my 3-4 days of using Arch, and so far, i think arch has a few more "useful" packages (For example, Firefox-nightly in AUR where i'd only get nightlies of Firefox on Ubuntu if i went to Hardy/Ubuntu Testing).

I admit i was being a bit hypocritical in my original post and i also admit that Ubuntu (using it as an example, sorry to all you Ubuntu haters) and Debian have AT LEAST 3000 flagrant packages in the repos that could probably be removed, maybe it's because of not having something like Synaptic that i feel a bit like there aren't as many packages in the repos...

...
Or maybe i'm just insane which is always a possibility.

Last edited by jdhore (2008-01-27 09:03:53)

wuischke · 2008-01-27 09:24:17

Answering seriously:

There are really only few things I miss, but they are pretty special and the Mac SDK is probably legally questionable when packaged. Most of them are so easy to compile manually that I never bothered to create a package.

My short list:
mingw32-crypto++
mingw32-wxMSW
a cross compiler for Mac OS X (I have one set up on my other computer, but only for 10.4, should do some testing with the new xcode)
poco (stop, I added this to aur)

ornitorrincos · 2008-01-27 09:26:03

you could always modify the PKGBUILD so yakuake depends in the kdemod's kdelibs (I suppose they are different, but I don't know), the good thing about arch is that, if somethings doesn't work the way I want I can easily modify it from the ABS tree.

I've found some software that wasn't in the AUR, but you could take for granted that it's significance is really small and I doubt that any other distro has it in the repos(just installed it for some university work, in two weeks it went off my computer)

Or maybe i'm just insane which is always a possibility.

don't worry, let's go to scare somebody

wonder · 2008-01-27 09:27:08

kopete is in aur and has kdelibs as dependency

funkyou · 2008-01-27 11:40:18

jdhore wrote:

KDEMod has individual packages, but if i wanted something like Yakuake which is in the Arch repos, but not the KDEMod repo, i have to go through dependency hell a bit.

Not true. KDEmod's kdelibs provide "kdelibs" for example ... Its 100% compatible...

EDIT, forgot something:

Most people i showed Arch just counted the number of available packages, but they didnt realize that there are no -dev or -common pkgs for example... I think this is one of the reasons why people say "distro X has more pkgs than Arch", which is not true at all...

Well, i am fully satisfied with the repos

Last edited by funkyou (2008-01-27 13:59:06)

miggols99 · 2008-01-27 15:47:46

I think it would be great to have KDE4 packages in unstable. I stopped using KDEmod to various issues and I would really like some decent KDE4 packages! The ones I'm using at the moment don't let me use KDM, which is quite annoying and a problem with .ICEauthority getting owned by root every time I run "sudo wlassistant". So that stops KDE4 starting. I have to chown it every time I start up Network manager always freezes my laptop every time the internet cuts out, so if I don't get any warning, my whole laptop freezes and I have to do a hard reboot. Hopefully this will get fixed with network manager 0.7...(I've tried everything - netcfg2, wifi-radar, wicd but they either crash all the time or don't work at all )

EDIT: Oh and loads of other distros have it. Off the top of my head there's *buntu, openSUSE and Mandriva.

Last edited by miggols99 (2008-01-27 15:50:32)

dolby · 2008-01-27 16:15:31

miggols99 wrote:

I think it would be great to have KDE4 packages in unstable. I stopped using KDEmod to various issues and I would really like some decent KDE4 packages! The ones I'm using at the moment don't let me use KDM, which is quite annoying and a problem with .ICEauthority getting owned by root every time I run "sudo wlassistant". So that stops KDE4 starting. I have to chown it every time I start up Network manager always freezes my laptop every time the internet cuts out, so if I don't get any warning, my whole laptop freezes and I have to do a hard reboot. Hopefully this will get fixed with network manager 0.7...(I've tried everything - netcfg2, wifi-radar, wicd but they either crash all the time or don't work at all )
EDIT: Oh and loads of other distros have it. Off the top of my head there's *buntu, openSUSE and Mandriva.

this is totally offtopic. you are merely referring to a package upgrade, that is NOT what the thread is talking about

freakcode · 2008-01-27 16:15:57

There were some nifty apps that I couldn't found on the repos. But then I go to AUR, and then someone already did a PKGBUILD there, I just have to compile and install. Then I keep smiling like "Omg, that's great".

drf · 2008-01-27 16:19:00

Actually, I thought Arch+AUR has more than any other distro, I found some packages here that needed X extra repositories in apt and such. And I think that those people don't realize that their repo list is filled with a lot of third-party repositories, a thing that you rarely need in Arch. Anyway.

schivmeister · 2008-01-27 18:35:34

i don't know why this is a concern, or a matter of concern, but as a fact, and a matter of fact, > packages = > peace of mind for the ones who are concerned.

what mass-oriented distros are trying to do is to create an intraweb of software, so Linux, by definition, can be "different" in the way software is managed. instead of browsing the world wide web for software, you have a localised pool for your platform from which you get your selection of programs. thus, these distros really work hard to include A-Z, 1-10. The targeted users of these distros have, psychologically, a mindset whereby > selection of software = good.

One can't really argue that it is a bad thing, of course it's good, but it is not a requirement for a platform, or yourself, to be functional. It is true that this distribution, by statistics and paper, has significantly fewer packages than those other popular ones. If it's a barrier to your productivity, there is always real-life priority-scheduling where you weigh the work to get things functional against productivity end-result. By all means, go ahead to another platform if there is a need.

For Arch Linux, this is not - and should not be - a concern.

Last edited by schivmeister (2008-01-27 18:37:24)

stylopath · 2008-01-27 19:05:42

At this moment, warsow and mixxx are the only programs I'm missing - So i think they are quite complete (at least for my needs).
Almost every other package can be found in the AUR, so i think the absolute amount of installable Packages is way higher than in other distros.
I am absolutely satisfied and I think that (almost) every one that claims arch wouldn't have enough programs doesn't really know the AUR (or doesn't count this packages because they are not _real_ packages but pkgbuilds).
Perhaps pointing people to AUR a bit more plus more TU's that can release packages in AUR to community would help.

jdhore · 2008-01-27 19:44:31

To all the people who commented on my comment:

@ornitoorrincos - I guess i could edit the PKGBUILD, but i don't think it's the fact of the modified KDELibs, but the modified qt-enhanced.

@wonder - The Kopete in AUR is pretty old (all things considering)...I believe the Kopete in AUR is 0.12.2 and the current Kopete with KDE 3.5.8 is 0.12.7 and from reading the changelogs, there were a bunch of useful changes. and on top of that, KDE (probably with a Kopete update) 3.5.9 is supposed to be coming out in the near future.

@miggols99 - If you go into the KDEMod forums, they have a link to a KDE4 repo...I'm not sure if it's KDE4 or KDEMod4, but i guess it's worth checking out. Though be warned, KDE4 is VERY buggy and VERY not-production-ready.

@funkyou - Thanks, i forgot about that...The fact that arch doesn't have 6 trillion perl-* or python-* or *-data or *-dev does show...something...And as i said, the Debian and Ubuntu repos (I have the most experience with them so i can't really talk about Gentoo or Fedora/CentOS) have at least a few thousand massively outdated packages...Like 3DDesktop...Which gave you a Beryl/Compiz-like cube before Beryl and Compiz existed.

daf666 · 2008-01-27 19:48:20

This might be a little off topic, but the fact that the repositories are separated (official repos + AUR) is also a factor in this issue.
At least if there was repos abstraction (like one search engine that lists packages in all repos at once) the users could have known whats there and whats not.
I am not even talking about the possibility to install packages from the AUR using pacman (with full abstraction), hmm wait a minute I just did.. why is this not implemented?
I may be a weirdo, only until recently I have been suspicious of the AUR and did not use it.. everything that pacman -Ss didnt find I installed by hand the old fashion way.. having this method fail with VMware (my fault probably) forced me to use the AUR.
More to the topic, I do find everything I need in the repos and when I dont its always understandable.
PS, some times i am surprised of what I find in the repos
And also, maybe a KIS distro is for users who like to KIS.

Last edited by daf666 (2008-01-27 19:52:00)

jdhore · 2008-01-27 20:17:59

daf666 wrote:

This might be a little off topic, but the fact that the repositories are separated (official repos + AUR) is also a factor in this issue.
At least if there was repos abstraction (like one search engine that lists packages in all repos at once) the users could have known whats there and whats not.
I am not even talking about the possibility to install packages from the AUR using pacman (with full abstraction), hmm wait a minute I just did.. why is this not implemented?
I may be a weirdo, only until recently I have been suspicious of the AUR and did not use it.. everything that pacman -Ss didnt find I installed by hand the old fashion way.. having this method fail with VMware (my fault probably) forced me to use the AUR.
More to the topic, I do find everything I need in the repos and when I dont its always understandable.
PS, some times i am surprised of what I find in the repos
And also, maybe a KIS distro is for users who like to KIS.

To get packages from the AUR, i'd suggest using aur-get or Yaourt...Yaourt will try to pull from the repos, but if something's not in the repos, it will try to pull from AUR. aur-get is probably AUR only, but i don't know since i use Yaourt.

jacko · 2008-01-27 20:24:21

@wonder - The Kopete in AUR is pretty old (all things considering)...I believe the Kopete in AUR is 0.12.2 and the current Kopete with KDE 3.5.8 is 0.12.7 and from reading the changelogs, there were a bunch of useful changes. and on top of that, KDE (probably with a Kopete update) 3.5.9 is supposed to be coming out in the near future.

This is why u update the PKGBUILD to whatever version u need. Its not really that hard.

if your that hell bent on installing Kopete, then u shouldn't complain about the 35mb of space needed for the dependencies while running it on gnome.

Last edited by jacko (2008-01-27 20:33:44)

jdhore · 2008-01-27 20:37:01

jacko wrote:

@wonder - The Kopete in AUR is pretty old (all things considering)...I believe the Kopete in AUR is 0.12.2 and the current Kopete with KDE 3.5.8 is 0.12.7 and from reading the changelogs, there were a bunch of useful changes. and on top of that, KDE (probably with a Kopete update) 3.5.9 is supposed to be coming out in the near future.
This is why u update the PKGBUILD to whatever version u need. Its not really that hard.
if your that hell bent on installing Kopete, then u shouldn't complain about the 35mb of space needed for the dependencies while running it on gnome.

I'm sorry, did i anywhere in any of my posts bitch about the 35MB of dependencies? NO. It's not the dependencies i care about, it's having dependency hell between Arch repos packages and KDEMod packages that was bothering me.

jacko · 2008-01-27 20:59:08

jdhore wrote:

I'm sorry, did i anywhere in any of my posts bitch about the 35MB of dependencies? NO. It's not the dependencies i care about, it's having dependency hell between Arch repos packages and KDEMod packages that was bothering me.

so now that u have gnome installed, what is stopping u from installing Kopete? Surely not KDEmod anymore, correct? So I guess arch does have all the packages u need.

Its not arch's fault that KDE and KDEmod are all messed up, talk to them(KDE/mod) if u want that issue straightened out.

skottish · 2008-01-27 22:10:23

"pacman -S windows_vista" returns nothing. Arch sucks.

jdhore · 2008-01-27 22:14:52

skottish wrote:

"pacman -S windows_vista" returns nothing. Arch sucks.

neither does pacman -S rms or pacman -S sco

miggols99 · 2008-01-27 22:39:20

jdhore wrote:

@miggols99 - If you go into the KDEMod forums, they have a link to a KDE4 repo...I'm not sure if it's KDE4 or KDEMod4, but i guess it's worth checking out. Though be warned, KDE4 is VERY buggy and VERY not-production-ready.

KDEmod has a very outdated 64bit repo (and when I say outdated, there is nothing there at all!). This is one of the reasons I quit using KDEmod. At the moment I am running KDE4 but it seems buggier than when I first installed it??

Last edited by miggols99 (2008-01-27 22:40:55)

jdhore · 2008-01-27 23:24:13

miggols99 wrote:

jdhore wrote:
@miggols99 - If you go into the KDEMod forums, they have a link to a KDE4 repo...I'm not sure if it's KDE4 or KDEMod4, but i guess it's worth checking out. Though be warned, KDE4 is VERY buggy and VERY not-production-ready.
KDEmod has a very outdated 64bit repo (and when I say outdated, there is nothing there at all!). This is one of the reasons I quit using KDEmod. At the moment I am running KDE4 but it seems buggier than when I first installed it??

Ahh...I know nothing about x64 as...I refuse to touch it even though most of my systems are x64-capable...I believe there's still not enough support for things and i'm not going over to x64 distros till everything that works in x32 works PERFECTLY in x64...

jdhore · 2008-01-27 23:41:48

Just as a quick addendum...With only KDEMod and ArchLinuxFR enabled as 3rd party repos, according to pacman, there are 9378 packages in the repos...Also, this is not counting all the packages in the AUR. Ubuntu 7.10 on the other hand, has about 23272 packages in all the repos. This amazes me...It's always felt like Arch has had a lot less and as i've said in previous posts, Ubuntu/Debian has a ton of python-*, perl-*, *-dev, *-common packages. So from just seeing this, i take back what i originally said

shen · 2008-01-28 02:52:05

Just a little input about the kopete issue...The package in the AUR is as dated as you can get. Stand alone kopete was only available through ver 0.12.2 and after that only available via the inclusion in the KDE package.

Anyways my thoughts is Arch has plenty of packages and if there isn't one for the one you need making a PKGBUILD isn't hard and if you can't you can request it and 9 times out of 10 a PKGBUILD will be put in the AUR. Arch doesn't have a tone of dated and old worthless packages and only what is current and used and that's good. The devs to a grand job of maintaining a solid repo and I give em props. Bottom line Arch for me is the best distro out there.

Arch Linux

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