Idk. Arch does have official repositories that are actively maintained and vetted. AUR is for the vast amounts of random software that isn’t popular or important enough to be officially maintained.

I’m not sure how to find a balance. One reason to use Arch is to always have the latest software, especially if you’re gaming. (Need to run very recent kernels, GPU drivers, and DEs to support new graphics cards.) So that’s very different from other stable LTS distros which carefully pick the package updates they incorporate.

Anyways, I do agree package cooldowns and such make a lot of sense. Package managers should be pulling out the stops on all the free controls they can implement. I can understand why anything requiring compute or maintainer time is a non-starter. (Sidebar: I don’t feel the same way about npm. Microsoft can afford to run malware scanners and analysis tools on npm packages.)

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

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beej71 2 hours ago | parent [-]

There's some big stuff in AUR like the binary VS Code and Chrome, fwiw.

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newsoftheday 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm on Kubuntu and I install VS Code using Microsoft's repo and Chrome using Google's repo. Also I do Wine and Docker using their own repos. I can't imagine VS Code or even Chrome being put into the mainstream Kubuntu/Ubuntu repos nor why such a burden should ever be shifted to Canonical.

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vlovich123 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That’s because you’re using something those companies officially support. Is your argument everyone running Linux needs to be on a Debian-based or Fedora-based distribution?

Btw the official “vscode on Linux” instructions literally point to the community maintained AUR (same for nix).

The truth of the matter is the AUR is poorly maintained structurally, regardless of what companies officially support. Things like letting arbitrary people unilaterally take over orphaned packages is horrendously stupid.

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sam_lowry_ an hour ago | parent [-]

Stupid or rather low-friction on purpose?

	▲	emsign an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Both. And that's an even worse combo, making stupidity frictionless.

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tjoff 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Since you are using the official repos thats not an issue. The issue is when the package creator is some rando on the internet.

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drnick1 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I wouldn't those programs. You have the corresponding FOSS versions (code-oss and chromium) in the main repository. Chrome is basically spyware.