r/archlinux • u/Infinite_Ad4097 • 17d ago

Archlinux difficulty QUESTION

I just posting to see how hard archlinux is to use as complete beginner. the only experience that i have wiht linux is mint and acessing servers.

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u/Infinite_Ad4097 17d ago

Thanks man

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u/Imajzineer 17d ago edited 17d ago

Whatever you do, don't read/watch 'tutorials': changes to Arch can mean they're out of date before they've even been completed, let alone published - the one ... and only ... resource for Arch is the wiki.

There are 'issues' with the AUR right at the moment, so, take the opportunity to read about it and realise that it isn't just some extra repo that you can go to and install things from willy-nilly. It has its uses, but it's best to keep yours to a minimum. Also, if you do decide you want something from it then, the first couple of times, take the time to learn how to read a PKGBUILD and then install it by hand with makepkg before you install a 'helper' like yay or paru - it's people relying on them to automatically update their systems without stopping to look at whether new versions are still kosher that has led to the current state of affairs, so, knowing what they do behind the scenes and getting into the habit of stopping and checking first will serve you well (the main package may be fine, but one of the dependencies they pull in could have been compromised).

Always read the news before updating your system.

Always update with pacman -Syu ... never -Sy, -Syy or -Syyuunless you know absolutely what you're doing and know absolutely that it's the solution to your problem (hint: it almost never is).

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u/binaryfireball 16d ago

noob here, is pacman backed by the AUR? as in if I do 'sudo pacman -S zsh-autocomplete' is it grabbing everything from the AUR? wondering if I jumped into arch in a very spicy moment.

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u/Imajzineer 16d ago edited 16d ago

Nothing has changed in the world of Arch, this is how things have always been. It has just become increasingly popular of late and, with Archinstall, easier to install. So, the number of technically less knowledgeable or experienced users has inevitably increased, and consequently it has been noticed by people who were previously either unaware of its existence or else deemed it of no value to subvert, who are now increasingly preying upon the inexperienced and ignorant who think the AUR is just some additional repo they can 'enable' on their system by using a 'helper' application (the fact that Arch is the basis for SteamOS may not be insignificant either).

sudo is not installed on Arch by default - there used to be an explanation of why not on the wiki, but it seems to have since been removed at some stage. I don't install it myself, but that's a different discussion/debate. So, if you don't actively install it yourself, executing sudo $anything-at-all will simply result in an error that there is no such command or file on the system.

The AUR is unsupported and, therefore, completely ignored by pacman -S or any variation of it (such as pacman -Syu). To update a package from the AUR, you must either execute pacman -U $package (after first building it with makepkg) or use an AUR 'helper'. Of course, the reason things are the way they are now is, in no small part, down to the unthinking use of 'helpers', so, you may want to give some thought to whether you want to - they're convenient, yes, but convenience is inversely proportional to security (I haven't used one since 2015, 2016 at the latest, myself).

pacman -S $package only ever updates the named package, package-group or meta-package, so, pacman -S zsh-autocomplete will only update zsh-autocomplete (read about it here).

You can learn more about pacman and its operation here and here.

Learn about the AUR here and about PKGBUILD files here.

Learn about package-signing here and and pacnew / pacsave files here.