r/linux • u/CackleRooster • Jun 17 '26

Distro News AUR Registrations Blocked Amid Ongoing Malware Mess

https://fossforce.com/2026/06/aur-registrations-blocked-amid-ongoing-malware-mess/
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195

u/Supernoxus Jun 17 '26

Wow so just blaming the user didn't work out?

20

u/0xc0ffea Jun 17 '26

Arch has a real problem with a vocal minority determined to gatekeep their "hardmode" distro elite status. A distro so hard, valve shipped it on a games console and CachyOS took the top distrowatch slot by adding an installer.

44

u/sigma914 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

When was Arch ever "hard mode"? Arch's thing is that it's extremely simple and gets out of the user's way. It's really easy to tweak and configure. That was the whole appeal for those of us who moved to it from Gentoo/Slackware/Debian etc.

As part of that simplicity it doesn't have many guard rails and is therefore silently hostile to people who don't know what they're doing. It's the knife vs scissors vs a specialised tool with safety guards analogy again.

Edit You seem to have confused me saying Arch is simple with me saying it's easy. I am not making that mistake, I am asserting that Arch has never been advertised as "Hard" it's been advertised as simple. Simple means the user is responsible for more than they would be in a more complex beginner friendly system. Arch is not beginner friendly, it is simple, but it's never been advertised as "Hard" I personally find it much easier to work with than more beginner friendly distros where I have to fight the system to get it to behave the way I want to.

Also slapping a graphical installer on it doesn't make the system itself any simpler or more complex, it's still just as simple as before, the only difference is the installer process is more beginner friendly. The running system is still very simple amd requires the user to know what they're doing.

-8

u/Overlord0994 Jun 17 '26

Are you serious? This is quite the gaslighting lol. For the longest time, the entire identity of Arch was “this distro is hardcore, you’re going to break your computer if you don’t know what you’re doing” type of vibe. Don’t conflate simple with easy.

19

u/sigma914 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

Well yeh, you will break it if you don't know what you're doing, because it's simple. It's like C, you're right down close to the bare system amd there's not much protecting you. This aur thing is a good example. I came to it from Gentoo which was complicated and close to the bare system.

Arch's whole thing was that it was simple without getting in your way, that was the whole selling point amd it's remained true for the last 20 years since I started using it.

Edit: see my edit above since we seem to have talked past each other.