So I recently installed Cachyos and I am now met with this problem.
There are kind of 2 main contenders here and I’m split between them. What do you use?
There is pacman + aur and then there is flatpak. Pacman has deep system integration and is much more lightweight but it has deep system integration and requires sudo to install. flatpak has sandboxing and easy permission management but it’s bloated and possibly less performant?
Of course if the package isn’t available on flathub then I will have to use the aur but when both are available it’s hard to decide.
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pacman /w chaotic-aur.
I don’t need the AUR directly, a GUI, or other managers. Just what came with my system + chaotic works just fine.
edit: typo
I use paru
I use an unholy blend of paru, Flatpak, Docker and AppImage apps (no Snap!) with Topgrade to update it all.
Yay.
And btw, that question is covered already.
You mean you have a package manager for your system without a password? Why would anyone want that?
Edit: For context. The part I was replying to was edited out.
(I can’t see the edited out part but if it was about yay…)
Yay builds in your local cache and then when it is ready to install it asks for sudo. The reason for this is because sudo can timeout during long builds, and more importantly if you compile with sudo you run the risk of arbitrary code execution. So it is safer to run with just
yayand then it will ask for sudo when it actually needed.No, that is not what it was about. I know, don’t run
sudo yay, but rather justyayand wait for password request. What it was is about a configuration to not ask password anymore, a passwordless package manger.
Convenience. It asks the kernel if you’re logged in and if you’re allowed to escalate. So, secure enough for a single-user system.
I don’t feel safe doing so. Would a script be able to run escalated rights without asking me a password? Is it somewhere displayed that such a process is started (notification in example or at least in the terminal a message?). And even for applications I am directly starting, I want it be explicit to require a password, that I am always aware its escalated root rights the app has now.
I can understand your view of convenience and I am “guilty” of some convenience stuff too. But this goes a bit too far for my taste.
Okok, i’ve removed the ssu config part.
Hey, I didn’t meant this to be removed or anything; was just sharing my personal opinion. Everyone can do whatever they want, as long as they are aware of consequences and get teached about it. I’m just a bit paranoid, that’s all.
Paru, so Pacman & AUR…
With exactly one exception: Steam via flatpak because that’s the single package left that would need 32bit libraries from multilib-repo since Wine finally left those dependencies behind.
You can choose between things like flatpak or aur packages, but you’re gonna have to use pacman either way, since your core packages are still managed by pacman even if you decide to install most things through flatpak. Just wanted to point that out in case you were thinking of not using it at all anymore, cause it’s definitely not good to have your system get extremely out of date overtime. Having said that, it’s a matter of preference. The aur has more packages available, but flatpak has verified packages available, so assuming you stick to those, it could be safer. It also offers things like sandboxing. When i was on arch i only used the aur. I usually go with whatever has the most packages available or whatever is most convenient.
Shelly is another option, comes pre installed on CachyOS. It’s aiming to modernise pacman. It’s been pretty good for my usage.
It has a GUI that can handle native repos, the AUR, flatpaks and app images. It can also be used in your CLI as well
Your question is not Arch specific, it’s “should I use flatpaks?” And the answer in my opinion is probably no.
Flatpaks are a good idea to isolate certain applications and to provide a uniform way of installing packages. So there might be some apps that are not available in your native package manager, but do provide flatpaks. For those cases flatpaks are probably preferred. But Arch based distros have the AUR, so there are a lot of apps that aren’t packaged for Arch that you can still get as a native package. Sure, using the AUR is risky and if you’re not on actual Arch things might break sporadically because of mismatched dependencies (although I think CachyOS is full parity of packages with Arch, so that’s maybe more of a Manjaro warning).
But flatpaks are clunky, bloated, require annoying permissions to be set to do basic things, and require you to update two package managers to do a full system update. They are more appealing for systems where you don’t want to give users root access but still allow them to install programs, but for your own computer I have never seen the appeal.
I usually use the pacman repo and if it’s not in there decide for this specific app if I use the AUR or flatpak version
Yup, that sounds like a good approach. I could even see people doing Pacman -> Flatpaks -> AUR and it would make sense to me.
This is my approach. I use pacman where I can, flatpaks when something is unavailable, and AUR to get everything not available in the first two, or when a native package is preferred but isn’t in the Arch repos.
I guess you could put it that way. For most general applications, I prefer to use flatpak over pacman. Pacman and arch’s repos to me are still very confusing over other package managers (dnf, apt, etc)
What makes it confusing to you?
I use
yay, as it comes by default with EndeavourOS. It’s basically an AUR helper that usespacmanand works quite the same.Flatpak is a different package manager and has nothing to do with your system packages. They are not exclusive, I use both. So what you basically asking isn’t which package manager people use, but rather which package format.
Same here, I tried a number of arch derivatives and arch as well when I got a new desktop last year (after many years of mac work computers, iMac desktop for my kids, mostly Alpine images in the cloud/on k8s, and many many years of mostly Debian and fedora derivatives before I had kids and had time to putter around with *nix). Endeavor suited my needs (some local LLM stuff, personal browsing, a few OSS projects, and Steam) and yay has generally worked great to bridge the gap between pacman and aur.
Pacman plus the AUR is the move on Arch based distros. The AUR gives you access to basically everything, and paru or yay handles the build chain without pain. Flatpak has its place for apps that ship messy runtime dependencies, but for most things it adds an unnecessary isolation layer. Have you tried paru as your AUR helper yet?
I sometimes prefer Flatpak over AUR, because I do not trust everyone on the AUR to run scripts with root rights on my system. At least Flatpaks are a bit sandboxed (even if the sandbox is an illusion) and the programs don’t install and run with root rights. Sometimes the Flatpak is from the original developer and the script in AUR is not. Or the AUR script is not updated well and often enough, unlike day one Flatpak updates. But Flatpaks do not integrate well in your system and applications can look out of place too. There is a lot to consider, besides what you already mentioned.
I use both, prefer the AUR in optimal cases.
i used their version of discover (forgot the name) and found it has mostly everything i was looking for (surprisingly so)
I don’t like Flatpak, so that makes it an easy choice for me. Flatpak apps never quite integrate properly
I like having Flatpaks as a fallback option, but if something is available in the arch repos, aur or chaotic-aur, I’ll always go there first
Personally, I use pacman when possible and flatpak when it’s not. I try to avoid the aur as I have had too many problems with missing dependencies or version conflicts. Plus, I don’t generally need things that are not in the repositories so it rarely comes up.
“But flatpaks are not lean!” While this is true, I find flatpaks don’t break my system. Flatpaks do use more resources, from storage to RAM, but I have plenty of both so it’s not really a concern.
Always use native pkgs if possibile (so use pacman/paru)
Look into the Chaotic AUR. It offers pre compiled AUR programs. Almost every app I really need has been there. If it’s not in there and I really need it and will get used often I’ll get it from the AUR.
I dont really like flatpaks much. I’ll use it if it’s easy and I dont plan on using the app much. Apps like Bottles. They are nice to have but rarely do I use it.
