oh you're the guy that likes them.

I hope and pray she is never able to take part in the workforce ever again.

The English language is full of varied meaning, connotation and words sometimes have more than one definition. It's really a marvellous thing.

But thanks for your redundant and value-less contribution.

You can read all about it here: https://m.slashdot.org/story/455918.

Microsoft hasn't "embraced" anything, they just realized there's higher quality software they can use for free because of the hard work of others.

that was a fascinating read - I'm a bit neutral about systemd but I have to say, this guy comes off like a pompous asshole from about word 3. But definitely some earth shattering pearls of wisdom here:

Clearly on a different level.

Genuinely interested to know more about why you think that. I've used Arch for about 20 years so I'm probably unconsciously a fanboi, but pacman is the approach to package management that I've hated least of all I've tried, so I stayed there.

The 'pain' here is that Arch wanted to provide a way for users to manage 'ad hoc' packages within the pacman system and make them available to other users if necessary. For reference I can find examples of only 4 other linux distros that support an equivalent:

• Gentoo GURU (Gentoo User Repository), an official user-contributed overlay. Also the broader ebuild overlay ecosystem.
• NixOS NUR (Nix User Repository), explicitly modeled on the AUR.
• Slackware SlackBuilds.org, community build scripts (though run independently, not by Slackware officially).
• CRUX its user-maintained ports collections.

As GP says Arch may need a rethink of how AUR is accessed and used, but I think it's idiotic to paint Arch as a whole in a negative light for a niche user contribution add-on that is totally separate to their official package line.

Great point supporting the wrong argument. AUR does NOT host binaries - there is NO WAY for anon to make a binary available directly to Arch users. Let's all get this clear.

What is the AUR?

The AUR (Arch User Repository) is a community-driven repository of build scripts called PKGBUILDs. It doesn't host packages themselves — it hosts recipes that tell your system how to fetch sources and compile/package software locally.

What it hosts: PKGBUILDs for software not in the official repos — proprietary apps (Spotify, Chrome), bleeding-edge or -git versions, niche tools, and packages awaiting promotion to official repos. The scripts are user-submitted and unvetted, so you should read a PKGBUILD before building.

What's a PKGBUILD?

Typical basic example:

# Maintainer: Your Name <you@example.com>
pkgname=hello
pkgver=2.12.1
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="GNU Hello, a program that prints a friendly greeting"
arch=('x86_64')
url="https://www.gnu.org/software/hello/"
license=('GPL-3.0-or-later')
depends=('glibc')
makedepends=('gcc')
source=("https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/hello/hello-${pkgver}.tar.gz")
sha256sums=('SKIP') # replace with real checksum, or use updpkgsums

build() {
cd "$srcdir/$pkgname-$pkgver"
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
}

package() {
cd "$srcdir/$pkgname-$pkgver"
make DESTDIR="$pkgdir" install
}

The entire POINT of AUR is that anyone can add a script for something they find useful. It can then be voted on by members for consideration to move into an official repo. From the above it's pretty clear that the onus for security and reviewing code is ENTIRELY on the user, and it's almost impossible to imagine that a compromised build script would just pick up votes and make it to a repo.

So in summary AUR is exactly like your Gentoo compile scripts.

No - the difference between AUR and Debian repos is that Debian repos are 'official' binaries, while AUR is a bunch of random build scripts uploaded by potentially anyone. In other words, exactly the same difference as between AUR and Arch repos.

Unbound: Unbound is a validating, recursive, caching DNS resolver. The main reason people run it is recursion: instead of forwarding your queries to an upstream like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8, Unbound walks the hierarchy itself — root servers, then TLD servers, then the authoritative server for the domain. The payoff is that no single third party ever sees your full query stream, and you're not trusting a public resolver's logging or filtering policies. It also does DNSSEC validation (cryptographically verifying answers weren't tampered with) and caches results locally for speed.

yeah and if you've ever used pacman that is 100% true. We aren't talking about pacman here.

AUR is explicitly a repo for user contributions. There is no signing, vetting, or anything - anyone who can read already knows this. Again you seem to be mixing up official Arch packages from official repos via pacman, versus building whatever shit I throw together in AUR with yay. Absolutely not the same thing.

Yes. Probably why they decided to call this OS Solara instead.

I still don't quite understand how Snowflake is doing so well - do they really offer so much quality of life and extra functionality that you'd want to pay several thousand dollars a month for a database ?

I believe the tech bros call it "dogfooding"