Weirdest Arch User Repository Package Ever Created!

The Arch User Repository or the AUR is an absolutely incredible resource and will usually have everything that you could possibly want this even includes weird packages that don't seem to make any sense in how they're packaged
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[@Aura_Mancer]

An AUR I love is the one that downloads a Windows Enterprise ISO, gets the fonts from it, installs them, and then deletes the ISO. And I think the package explained how nothing of this violated Microsoft TOS. It's ttf-ms-win10-auto

[@phoenixrising4995]

Yeah those pesky Windows fonts if you want to keep compatability with MS Office docs Yuck.

[@anon_y_mousse]

That's hilarious.

[@tuantran3629]

The correct package is ttf-ms-win10-auto btw

[@Aura_Mancer]

@@tuantran3629 ah, true. I'll edit it

[@Aura_Mancer]

@@phoenixrising4995 believe me that I'm not fond of having *calibri* on my system

[@user-dc9zo7ek5j]

The person dedicated so much time and knowledge in order to get this up and running. I am more than impressed.

[@DeeezNuts]

man just wanted to listen to some music

[@Fareke2]

@@DeeezNuts There are more ways to listen to music.

[@Handy-Handy]

@@Fareke2 I think @Deeez's sentence was highly ironic :D

[@pumpkinjutsu1249]

@@DeeezNuts username checks out

[@DaVince21]

So basically, they _ported_ a whole application in nothing but an AUR script. Pretty neat.

[@nikkiofthevalley]

Not a very complicated port, but yeah. Trying to port a native application however, that'd be impressive. I can think of ways you could do such a thing as well, would be stupidly fiddly, though, and very slight changes would break everything.

[@aDifferentJT]

I’d class the patches that are being applied as the real port, and those aren’t inline within the AUR script

[@oro6768]

At this point, I'd be surprised to see something the AUR *doesn't* have. Even if it's broken, I always see an AUR package for an app

[@tgheretford]

Straight off the top of my head, AbracaDABra, a DAB player which uses SDR dongles to decode digital radio stations.

[@ОлегСаперенко]

@@tgheretford I am surprised this isn't in aur yet. It even has ubuntu version Though 4 stars on github might tell something about it's popularity

[@SkyyySi]

The calamares installer has no AUR package. There are a lot of PKGBUILDs for it, but not in the AUR.

[@oro6768]

Yall have been played for fools, as I can now submit those packages to the AUR so that there is never a package not in the AUR

[@aerospherology2001]

Even BrickBench, a level editor for LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, has one.

[@salvaje1]

I use Deezer on a daily basis and when I moved to arch based distros and had access to the aur I was surprised that this package exists and wondered why Deezer doesn't just make it available officially. I also wondered how the packaged download an exe and yet I don't see wine being used anywhere. This is a great explainer.

[@thefearlessgeek]

I imagine Linux is such a small percentage of users that they don't want to spend time supporting it if people have problems.

[@elsandosgrande]

@@thefearlessgeek Why does Spotify bother then?

[@elsandosgrande]

Also, hello fellow Deezer user and greetings from Bosnia!

[@thefearlessgeek]

@@elsandosgrande Some companies do it, and others don't. Maybe the people at Spotify understand how it can benefit them and the people at Deezer don't, or they don't think what benefits they get out of it are worth it to them. I'm not in the inner-workings of either company, so it's hard for me to say.

[@SkyyySi]

@@thefearlessgeek Since browser agents report the OS, my guess would be that Spotify sees enough Linux users there for it to make (financial) sense, while that's not the case for Deezer.

[@MyAmazingUsername]

This was a fun video. I can add some to it: 1. Exe isn't an "archiving format". It's just that many generic installer tools such as InstallShield output as exe files with custom ways of embedding archive data inside them. And 7zip, being the king that it is, recognizes and unpacks those formats. 2. The reason why they are at Electron 13 is most likely NOT what the maintainer is claiming. The reason is that Electron 13 is the final Electron version with the legacy "remote" API which allows GUI code to talk directly to Electron's backend. In Electron 14 and up, you must talk via local sockets instead. All old apps that used the "remote" API need to be rewritten if they want to run on a modern Electron. :P

[@TurtleKwitty]

In what world is "They made breaking changes" not what the maintainer is claiming aka "They made breaking changes"?

[@MyAmazingUsername]

@@TurtleKwitty I misheard Brodie's reading of the maintainer's message as something else. I checked the screenshot now and see that the "remote" API was indeed the issue and that it was already mentioned. 😂

[@subterfugue]

EXE seems to be an "archiving format". Why would it not be? It allows you to archive files.

[@MyAmazingUsername]

No, it's not an archiving format. Why wouldn't you go and look it up after I just explained it in detail and explained how 7zip can open them? EXE is an executable format. It contains native machine code for the CPU, and instructions for Windows about what byte to start executing the code from. Many installers put a small GUI app and decompression code in the EXE, and then they append the compressed installer files at the end of the EXE after the end of the program code. Most of them use proprietary ways of packing the data, but 7z has implemented extractors for all of the popular ones.

[@Winnetou17]

@@subterfugue What Hello World said. To simplify it more, it's basically a format which has a specific code for "this file ends here" which windows doesn't go over (it only loads up to that point). Which allows people to add whatever data they want after that code, in the same file. Including compressed data. But it can really be anything. Including one or more icons that can be displayed by windows file manager, regardless of the executable code.

[@jeverest]

I like these style videos of yours where you go a bit deeper on "taken for granted linux / distro features" for which us noobs out there need more exposure. I mean, of course, but I didn't internalize all that could be achieved with package installations. Thanks!

[@XeroLinux]

Oh wow a dedicated video... I knew it would end up as one from your reaction during our talk... Great job clarifying the situation. That's what keeps me coming back...

[@Appalling68]

This is just the sort of "out of left field" Arch videos I really enjoy. Thank you!

[@x3roxide]

This was really entertaining. The weirdest package I needed on the aur not even close to this but is strange due to licencing. Cisco's packet tracer cannot be downloaded without being enrolled in a free course, so the aur requires you have the Deb package in the folder prior to using makepkg. This pretty much breaks aur helpers like yay or paru.

[@JTCF]

I've used Deezer for some time when Spotify wasn't available in my country. Quite a pleasant experience. Didn't have a clue that there's so much happening under the hood of installation. Nice video!

[@scheimong]

Similar things with many applications that are packaged for Debian/Fedora but not for Arch (for example, Google Chrome): the AUR build script simply extracts the .deb/.rpm archive and repackages it into an Arch-compatible .pkg.zst file. Pretty awesome and straightforward if you ask me.

[@samgould8567]

Similarly, it is easy to go in the opposite direction, as well. I’ve done so with RPMs.

[@yawl923]

debtap

[@TheCalcaholic]

A similarly crazy install script is the widevine installer included in Kodi that enables widevine on arm devices. IIRC, it downloads a full chrome OS image and extracts widevine from there :D

[@lorenzo42p]

this is pretty awesome. I love that you go a bit into the details, not just read headlines

[@AKFADE]

Someone needs to do security scans on the AUR. There have been malware packages taken over in the past

[@melany63]

Despite not being guaranteed that the package will keep working with a updated Arch everytime, it's way more convenient than using a external repository or ppa on ubuntu for my workflow. One of that very convenient things is what you showed on this video! The craziest AUR package that I have used is a driver for kyocera printers, which extracks a .deb, change the directories to be compatible with arch and also apply patches on some python code to make it work properly

[@bologna3048]

My favorite part about Arch is also my favorite part about Gentoo. "Hold my hand please!" "No."

[@supernenechi]

My favorite AUR package I found is one for a decompiled and reverse engineered version of the original Microsoft pinball game. Not the actual one mind you, because the original windows version is also on the AUR, no the reverse engineered one.

[@CMDRSweeper]

Interesting, sadly the Electron changes are FUBARed... I am thinking of all the annoyances of Discord and the issues it keeps creating and the horrible suggestions from their developers on Windows. "Just run it in Administrator mode"

[@5omebody]

note: it's not "because of the way this package is handled" that electron isnt bundled with the application, its a few things: - electron itself takes up tons of space - you cant switch it out for a different, compatible version of electron - also cant update it with a patched version - arch prefers not to have binaries as the primary mode of distribution in the first place cuz that makes it near impossible (if even legal) to fix incompatibilities with arch - this is the exact point they make, you yourself mention it later in the video might be worth checking out the electron packaging guidelines in the arch wiki if youre interested

[@5omebody]

if anything, it feels almost like the normal installation process for a normal electron package - the only difference being that its packed in a windows exe instead of a regular archive, which of course pacman extracts by default which is why you dont normally see an extraction step in many electron pkg builds

[@kj-marslander]

This was your best video by far, please make more like this. I really liked how you explained everything. 🤩

[@Kevin-fw9ks]

I have seem a similar approach with Authy, it's available to Linux but just as a snap package, so some people just download the .exe of the Windows version, extract and run the bundle directly with electron. In AUR you can find the two ideas, there is authy and authy-electron which extracts the snap package, the first using the actual binaries inside the .snap and the second running the .asar, and there is authy-desktop-win32-bin which does the same way as deezer

[@imhemish]

I did come over this package, and found the packaging nice and attractive, and i thought i could similarly extract and package "Resso" following similar procedure, but i found that unlike deezer, resso has actually compiled the code into os-specific node binaries, so it couldnt be extracted like that. In deezer's case, it gets actually extracted to actual code

[@samuelbidocuello]

A true demonstration of truly knowing Electron. Ho, ly, shit.

[@igorthelight]

11:32 - Kinda true. But repackers do a lot of interesting stuff with modifying execatables, DLL's, disabling AVX2 instructions, enabling PAE (so 32bit application could use 4 Gb of RAM instead of 2). And there are also mysterious "Windows 7 patches" that allow some of the newest applications/games created for Windows 10, run on Windows 7. Pretty cool stuff ;-)

[@somerandomprogrammer6886]

I've been using this package for a while and it has done wonders for me. Currently I'm using Deezer by passing my smartphone audio output to my PC via bluetooth but keeping this package just in case. I hope this shape of repackaging electron windows apps happens more.

[@sumnerd69]

what I find odd is that whoever is in charge of these projects feels the need to stress test your cpu with a full blown web browser just to let you listen to mp3 files

[@DeeezNuts]

Who wrote the app? Probably some intern(s) who only knows javascript

[@linuxsbc]

Because it's easy and doesn't need to be rewritten for different operating systems (in this case Windows and MacOS).

[@attemptedpolymath9660]

This is why I use a terminal based Spotify client. The Spotify app in Linux is just an electron app and consumes stupid quantities of your system resources.

[@ahmadshahzad4023]

@@attemptedpolymath9660 the Spotify app on Windows and Mac is also an electron app if I am correct.

[@phoenixrising4995]

@@attemptedpolymath9660 cmus with a spotify plugin would be great.

[@majoryoshi]

the best thing about this is that it was originally someone who just didn’t want to use the web app (i assume there is one) or use something like android-x86, and electron basically says “here you go”

[@coopercummings8370]

Really what electron does is hand you google chrome with a sticker that says "Definitely not a web browser" on it, but it does at least make multi-platform implementations easy, although it does have the disadvantages that come with it being a web browser.

[@yearoflinux]

It's a Electron app that's why it's possible. Modding Electron apps is common, even on Windows, like adding dark mode or something.

[@marcusmeaney]

I always watch until the end to see how long he'll pause before he's out

[@Winnetou17]

Me too!

[@uuu12343]

I apologize beforehand but I'm surprised nobody has said this yet DEEZER NUTS

[@exnihilonihilfit6316]

Actually, somebody said it 3 hours before you. Not that I get the joke... I guess it's beyond my English level. 😀

[@master138]

they can simply convert it to a flatpak package. flatpak manifests are so similar to PKGBUILDs. this way they can mitigate the electron version issues for a long time...

[@BrodieRobertson]

It's already using a package with a locked electron version so Flatpak doesn't change that

[@mykytao5028]

insane! really cool, thanks for this video

[@AlexanderPrussak]

You should have a look at the ttf-ms-win10-auto package. It's incredible

[@chairwood]

y

[@Couleur]

your most passionating video yet!

[@LucasOe]

I install software on my Windows machine with Scoop and it works in a similar way. Instead of running the exe or msi files it just extracts the content and installs it manually.

[@LautaroLosio]

Actually interesting video about packaging applications!

[@katrinabryce]

I wonder if this approach could be used to port stuff to FreeBSD? I’ll maybe give it a try.

[@LetrixAR]

AUR is the reason I always go with Arch Linux instead of other distro.

[@goawqebt6931]

The maintainer of notion-app used to do that too

[@buuf456]

AUR give you more problems, so you can fix them whole day. Neck beards call that fun.

[@HabaouiAdam]

Hey! Thanks so much for this video!

[@MrTurbo_]

8:10 not completely true, there are 2 packages which can make it almost impossible to reverse engineer, bytenode and asarmor

[@cheebadigga4092]

Very nice information. Question: Because the PKGBUILD basically removes the licence information from the package, does that make installing the package kind of illegal?

[@catrybou123]

It still shows the license on the PKGBUILD so I think that it’s fine.

[@cheebadigga4092]

@@catrybou123 according to the Arch Wiki (page PKGBUILD), that's only step 1 of 2. You still have to install the license file if it's a custom license, which it is for the deezer package.

[@martinus_mars]

this is pretty hilarious. thanks for telling us about this

[@n1vz3r]

you can learn many things from aur scripts. Helped me to install taskcoach on a fedora system! (don't ask)

[@anon_y_mousse]

Oh yeah, I'm going to ask. Why?

[@spoilerkiller]

"If you liked the video, like the video. And if you really liked the video.."

[@Raspredval1337]

then why not all electron apps are distributed as an electron app and not as a bloated bundle? Imagine if there was a chromium runtime, that is shared between the browser and the electron apps. It would be way efficient and stable

[@BrodieRobertson]

A lot of projects bundle Electron because they need to bundle Electron, they are built against a very specific version and haven't been tested with anything

[@phoenixrising4995]

I wish websites would just let you use a standard browser as well. Game launchers are also becoming the same problem on Windows. Steam and Epic games launchers and that is it for me.

[@anon_y_mousse]

I believe you're thinking of Java. As much as I hated it as a language, the setup for such a system would be better. If someone were to take on such a project, but obviously in a better language, I'd definitely contribute to that.

[@wumwum42]

@@phoenixrising4995 Luckily they are installed only once. But you probably have over 10 electron inststalled on a avarage windows system, 3-4 of them in autostart... EGS, Spotify, Discord in autostart and you are already at three. Now that I think about it, even I am actively using 4 on my linux pc: zettlr, ferdium, bitwarden and signal.

[@rcht958]

Literally the most genius thing I've ever seen

[@markonfilms]

Wow this is pretty cool!

[@jongeduard]

Hmm, currently on Arch I still just listen deezer using my webbrowser, but I might consider installing this app now. Great project indeed. Certain repackagings are not new to me by the way when it comes to AUR. I have also seen solutions that download Deb or RPM packages from the the internet and convert those. Which makes sense because a lot of proprietary applications that support Linux actually only support the distros associated with these 2 well known formats.

[@justaguyalive6762]

makes me wonder if this can be done with discord

[@BrodieRobertson]

What in particular, discord works on Linux

[@seanrileyhawkins4511]

I like how some Linux users have the idea of 'I will do it myself'.

[@OleksaBaida]

The one from the conversation with DarkXero ))

[@user-gw1sh9qc2s]

The more you explain this the more I'm convinced all this was a huge mistake.

[@YannMetalhead]

Great explanation.

[@eyssewieringa2084]

Does this mean we could get audio streaming on discord?

[@ahmadshahzad4023]

No

[@eyssewieringa2084]

@@ahmadshahzad4023 why not? We could do they same the maintainer of the deezer package did, right?

[@ahmadshahzad4023]

@@eyssewieringa2084 if I recall correctly, Discord uses the same version of Electron for Windows/Linux/Mac, so even if you pulled it out and slapped it inside a Linux distro using this method, it wouldn't make a difference as you would need to use the version of Electron used by Discord, just like Deezer needs Electron 13. Also, the Discord version of Electron is not vanilla since Discord also slapped their own patches on top of it. That version of Electron simply doesn't play nice with Linux's audio system.

[@mariusdulce4177]

try webcord idk

[@alex15095]

I haven't tested it, but there is a flatpak package called discord-screenaudio which supposedly mods the Discord client to support audio streaming

[@RadikaRules]

This is _wild._ I love it

[@leonidas14775]

I use neither deezer nor arch but find this interesting

[@sakesaurus]

when the developer refuses to release linux build community: Fine, I'll do it myself

[@Cuperino]

Notepad++ packages for Linux come with their own WINE instance.

[@richardrapstine9014]

I know the Arch users will snicker at me, but what is meant by "even more against how Arch does things"?

[@martinhertz4957]

7z specifically here supports nsis installers(most don't), not exe persay. Sorry for nitpicking and thanks for vid. (Edit: Sorry maybe covered before, though just skimmed long other post afterwards posting, sorry)

[@BrodieRobertson]

No I only briefly mentioned it, that's good to know

[@Juiceboxmakes]

I think the app is broken now with the latest electron update

[@dorktales254]

Doesn't this installer ignore localles?

[@linuxheki9326]

Can we do that with Discord?

[@BrodieRobertson]

What in particular, discord works on Linux

[@linuxheki9326]

@@BrodieRobertson Get discord out of electron and put it into updated electron

[@obama3024]

Guess who are gonna try to do that with every proprietary electron app >:3

[@9a3eedi]

Interesting... I wonder if this can be done for Whatsapp for desktop as well, which for some strange reason doesn't have a Linux version. Electron is cancer. What's the point of adding so much bloat if in the end you're not going to make it properly cross platform anyway

[@Dratchev241]

impressive, most impressive

[@thepaulcraft957]

this is incredible

[@VictoriaMan69]

Deezer isn't worth using compared to most any other music service. It's lossless hq files are few and hard to find.

[@thgreenshaman8503]

Chur bro from New kiwiland

[@flleaf]

not gonna watch the video but i once found bullet hell gacha rhythm game when searching for rhythm games in aur

[@007arek]

Just open it in web browser. 😅

[@BrodieRobertson]

Where's the fun in that when you can take these steps and have a desktop app

[@oglothenerd]

This is pretty funny.

[@gFamWeb]

If a customer-facing application can be modified to log URLs that point to sensitive data.... that's a poorly designed app.

[@BrodieRobertson]

Without a doubt

[@aeleequis]

Can you put some more dBs on your audio, I'm currently on headphones, at 95% volume and I still find hard to understand some things that you say. (Also, switch to another video blasts my ears like a cannon as I forget to tone it down lmao) Your videos are fine, just talk closer to the micro or touch the levels a hit

[@Winnetou17]

Weird, for me, his level is normal.

[@M1America]

I would have a soy warning at the start of the video. Holy cow that was a lot of soy.

[@thingsiplay]

Deez Nuts

[@cookiedestroyer402]

deprecated by guix

[@danielnolan8049]

"Listen to us on deezer." "What's deezer?" "Deezer nutz! Ha, gotem!"

[@Darudas0420]

Such wired hand movement i cant concentrate on the content

[@ytuser13082011]

This is genius :v

[@bogansrun]

newbie linux user here. Been nearly 8 months on Fedora (36, built from server ISO as of late), started on Ubuntu for the first 3 (My biggest regret). I could never play things like Nexus: The Jupiter Incident on windows and then bam, I'm Marcus Cromwell again because some nerds put their heads together and made all the wonderful things that magically appear on my computer after I type some words. To other noobs. 'Sudo' = Oi! 'dnf' = get to work ya lazy slob (or the other ones) 'install' = Install then the thing you want to install. Linux desktop is the union worker of the desktop space. Normal stuff, paid by the hour. Anything that requires some fiddling and screwing around with? You need yubbos for that. Linux, the yubbos kernel, they just don't know it yet.

[@SkyFly19853]

And my favorite distro is Windows 7. Even better than Arch! P.S. I use both Linux and Windows btw... 😏

[@Flackon]

lmao

[@ThePendoMaster]

discord_arch_electron is similar, but not quite as many patches/modifications

[@povilasbrilius]

Though not #toughbook #COSMIC #ERB efforts on the stake 😁🥬🍄🍗