The AUR, key words “user repository” is a specific weak point. It doesn’t have the same level of oversight that the main arch repo has. Stick to main repos and verified flatpaks and it’s very unlikely that you’d ever be compromised.

Linux isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly better than windows where you just download executables willy nilly to install your software.

That is sound advice, the AUR is most definitely not a trusted source though. For the normal arch repos the people who put the stuff there are known, they work for the project, you're as likely to get malware from one of those as you are to read an article bashing gamespot in gamespot, the people in charge of putting the packages there are the ones with more vested interest in things working so they won't knowingly introduce malicious code (plus it's a handful of people who know each other by first name).

The AUR is a different story, because anyone can put stuff there it's very easy to have malicious code end up there. It doesn't happen that often because most of the time it's fairly obvious and it gets flagged straight away, plus if people start doing that people will migrate away from the AUR, so it's a high risk low reward situation. But as more and more people start to use Arch derivatives that come with the AUR enabled without understanding any of this it becomes a more rewarding thing to exploit.

Yeah. The I'm A Mac crowd had the same problem... god damn it, two or three decades ago.

As market share increases, platforms become a much bigger target for malware. And a lot of the "I don't need to run virus scans" crowds learn the hard way.

Its the same with open source. Obviously NOBODY around here would parrot this bullshit, but there is the idea that because something is FOSS it is safe. Code is only as safe as code review and there have been a few high profile cases of social engineering to get malicious code past even fairly rigorous review. Let alone "Well, that script is FOSS so somebody probably reviewed it" that we see so often.

@DirkMcCallahan @Tundra The AUR isn't a trusted source, but most of the the Arch cult forget to mention that.

It shouldn't be used as a marketplace, it should be used as a repository. You can probably find a lot of malware on GitHub, doesn't mean you go there to choose your text editor.

I never search the AUR directly, I only use it if some README tells me I can install their software via an AUR package.

The arch maintainers package more software than most other distributions.

Sorry, but I fail to see this.

I suppose if you're accounting literally all independent distros, then you're probably right. However, if we'd be more realistic and compare it to other well-established independent distros^[I'm basically counting Alpine, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, openSUSE, Slackware, Solus and Void. I didn't count Guix System and NixOS for how their 'repositories' are built different and therefore not easily comparable to the others.], then we notice that the vastness of the packages found in Arch's repository is rather lackluster at the very least. Heck, by virtually all metrics, Arch together with its derivatives undoubtedly belong in the upper echelons of usage stats; only being second to the Debian-family of distros. IMO, however, the size of its repository absolutely doesn't reflect this; as it's only bigger than Slackware, Solus and Void. The inclusion of these smaller projects is arguably charitable on my side*. But to drive the point home very clearly: Arch's repository is smaller than Alpine's, Debian's, Fedora's, openSUSE's and Gentoo's with a ratio of (about) two to one (except for openSUSE).

Ok thanks, I never knew they package more stuff on the stock repos.

I had no idea that existed but I’ve just returned from r/unixporn. There are some sick setups. Also we all copy. My entire neovim config is copied and modified from a couple dozen setups I admired. Nothing wrong with copying things you like. Don’t gate keep Linux.

However… Minecraft cracked is pretty funny lol.

I know its user produced content. But there are still rules that are enforced by Archteam and they host and link to it. And why not tell people about security issues? They could at least tell people in the news, so we can act accordingly. This is super disappointing. Is there any trustworthy RSS feed that covers this?