I’m just curious. Answer to this question determines if I will switch to Manjaro or Arch, etc. Thanks
Hi @muslim,
There are very few things not available in the AUR. In about a year I’ve only come across one thing. And I can’t even remember what it was. There are also .Appimages, snaps and flatpaks. Between those, I suspect you’ll find what you need.
Nevertheless, you should remember, remember that a .deb and .rpm is just an archive file and can be converted to be used as an AUR package. (I don’t even know if that’s the correct term. Or concept. Or whatever.)
You can do this manually if you have the know-how. This is obviously the recommended way.
For .deb files there’s also the controversial debtap
I haven’t ever had the need to use an RPM, so can’t really say anything about that.
There is also alien package converter that might be able to help.
Hope this helps!
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I converted a few deb files with debtap and they all work fine so give that a go
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You forgot available in source.
Technically, what is available in AUR isn’t packages but PKGBUILDs, scripts that allow you to build and install packages. As such, many if not most AUR packages are built directly from the source code, which is possible as long as the source is publicly available – which is generally the case with FOSS software.
Furthermore, such scripts are very often made by Arch (and derivative) users, rather than the project developers. In many cases, projects may only provide DEB and RPM packages themselves, but that doesn’t mean a PKGBUILD isn’t available in AUR.
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If the program is available only as pre-compiled binary or for various reason can’t be compiled natively it could be repackaged into an Arch package, I have several programs like this in the AUR and I have helped another user here about a month ago: Need help installing a program, Polyglot
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You can also just use the deb itself as the base for a PKGBUILD. See the Google Chrome PKGBUILD for an example.
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