I'll note that OpenSuse also has Packman which a shitton of people enable (for codecs), has also 'one namespace only' an looser policies than the main distro.
I do not think this something you can escape by switching distro.
Yes, the only reason this isn't happening in other distros is simply popularity.
Namespacing is the solution, and as mentioned in the article some ditros do indeed have namespaced user repos, like Fedora's Copr. The trust model of a flat namespace user repo is completely broken when the maintaining user can change at any moment.
In case anyone missed it, the latest version of yay (v13+) supports being able to skip recently added packages through its new Lua extension system https://jguer.github.io/yay/lua.html#upgrade-selection-hooks. You can control the threshold since it's just user configuration now.
Despite that official Arch repos weren't affected in this attack,
I would not recommend using Arch (or any rolling release distro)
for anything that requires security.
(Imagine if the xz backdoor targeted Arch...)
An Arch maintainer that I personally know once admitted that he
rarely review upstream changes when bumping package versions.
He only does that when the build breaks.
I can't blame him for what he did, since it's not reasonable to
ask package maintainers to spend all their time on those stuff,
especially in this "Age of AI" where more and more software are being
aggressively refactored (or rather rewritten) and added more features.
What we can do is choosing a stable distro (like Debian) where
packages are more thoroughly reviewed, and apply security practices
(such as TOTP, sandboxing browsers and video players, etc.)
even though they cause inconvenience.
> An Arch maintainer that I personally know once admitted that he rarely review upstream changes when bumping package versions.
Cool story bro. Assuming that's common, I have trouble understanding why Arch (non-AUR) is any more at risk than Debian--besides the latter being more popular and having more users/incidental testers, which is a real benefit if that's your goal, but has its own drawbacks (like older and known-vulnerable packages lingering for longer before updated releases are made available).
> it's not reasonable to ask package maintainers to spend all their time on those stuff, especially in this "Age of AI"
Aren't Debian and friends similarly at risk of this as well, then?
> security practices (such as TOTP, sandboxing browsers and video players, etc.)
I'm not sure if those are more or less prevalent on Arch; I know that many IDEs and GUI programs I've installed on Arch ran by default in Flatpaks or similar, and Debian/Ubuntu like Snaps, but I'm honestly not familiar with whether those ecosystems have significant and/or equivalent penetration in different distros.
The AUR is not the Arch package manager or repository. The main Arch package repos are managed similarly to Debian, or Fedora, or whatever--caveat Arch's nature as a rolling release, but in terms of vetting and ownership/security, the approaches are similar. pacman installs from regular, real, vetted repositories by default. pacman will never install from the AUR. pacman is the official Arch package manager and the only one that is provided with the main Arch distribution/install instructions.
The AUR is, as many others have pointed out, a deliberately un-vetted pile of random Git repos. Arch deliberately doesn't even ship with a default one-click installer for AUR packages; their published guidance is "git clone this stuff from wherever it's hosted and build it at your own risk". Plenty of third-party, non-Arch-blessed tools turn that into a one-click process, but it's not "part" of Arch itself--at least not any more than, like, curl | bash or directions on how to add rando websites to /etc/apt/sources.list.d is part of Debian and friends.
I've used Arch as a daily driver for years. At peak, I've had five (5) total packages, with no transitives, installed from the AUR. Today I have one: sublime-text-4. It's perfectly possible--and extremely reasonable for many users, even power users--to live in an AUR-less world, or to use so few AUR packages that the guidance of "read what you're installing, doofus" is manageable and not onerous.
The AUR has consistently had warnings around it of 'verify the PKGBUILD', far more so than any other package repository that allows anyone to sign up. Probably the only notable difference is the ease of taking over an orphaned package.
AUR is fast and loose and doesn't do much "handling" by design, so it's hard to find any equivalent repo. But there's always a tradeoff between fresh (nixpkgs unstable, might be the closest) and tested (Debian).
AUR isn't just the testing repo of Arch; it's explicitly just an open spot where anybody can put up "here's a PKGBUILD for folks". I don't see how it's like either the Nix or Debian examples.
Well, Nix has NUR which is a direct equivalent but it's not nearly as broadly used and I assume "here's a PKGBUILD for folks" is already too permissive for you if you're asking.
There's no maintainer vetting process in nixpkgs as far as I know, anyone can own a bunch of packages. There are quality standards and it's not "here's a bunch of nix code for folks" but it's the next possible thing in the line after that.
It seems like you may have mistakenly inferred that I have issues with the AUR?
I don't; I use Arch on 100% of my personal servers, have done so for something approaching 20 years, and don't see myself changing.
But I treat the AUR for what it is: a place where anybody can say "here's a PKGBUILD for folks" and it's on me to evaluate it on its merits.
I was legitimately asking the person upthread what other distro they felt had a better model for this kind of sharing, because they seemed to think this was a reason for Arch users to jump ship and I was curious what they thought would be the elements of a better system.
Gentoo's model appears to be basically the same? Like the AUR, anybody can submit basically anything they want. The requirements amount to containing valid packages, having a bugzilla account, and putting your package definitions in VCS somewhere.
I'll note that OpenSuse also has Packman which a shitton of people enable (for codecs), has also 'one namespace only' an looser policies than the main distro.
I do not think this something you can escape by switching distro.
Yes, the only reason this isn't happening in other distros is simply popularity.
Namespacing is the solution, and as mentioned in the article some ditros do indeed have namespaced user repos, like Fedora's Copr. The trust model of a flat namespace user repo is completely broken when the maintaining user can change at any moment.
Isn't Arch's AUR flat namespace quite unique? Ubuntu's PPAs are also not flat.
In case anyone missed it, the latest version of yay (v13+) supports being able to skip recently added packages through its new Lua extension system https://jguer.github.io/yay/lua.html#upgrade-selection-hooks. You can control the threshold since it's just user configuration now.
A bunch of common yay commands also return back the last updated time of a package thanks to https://github.com/Jguer/yay/pull/2846.
Despite that official Arch repos weren't affected in this attack, I would not recommend using Arch (or any rolling release distro) for anything that requires security. (Imagine if the xz backdoor targeted Arch...)
An Arch maintainer that I personally know once admitted that he rarely review upstream changes when bumping package versions. He only does that when the build breaks.
I can't blame him for what he did, since it's not reasonable to ask package maintainers to spend all their time on those stuff, especially in this "Age of AI" where more and more software are being aggressively refactored (or rather rewritten) and added more features.
What we can do is choosing a stable distro (like Debian) where packages are more thoroughly reviewed, and apply security practices (such as TOTP, sandboxing browsers and video players, etc.) even though they cause inconvenience.
> An Arch maintainer that I personally know once admitted that he rarely review upstream changes when bumping package versions.
Cool story bro. Assuming that's common, I have trouble understanding why Arch (non-AUR) is any more at risk than Debian--besides the latter being more popular and having more users/incidental testers, which is a real benefit if that's your goal, but has its own drawbacks (like older and known-vulnerable packages lingering for longer before updated releases are made available).
> it's not reasonable to ask package maintainers to spend all their time on those stuff, especially in this "Age of AI"
Aren't Debian and friends similarly at risk of this as well, then?
> security practices (such as TOTP, sandboxing browsers and video players, etc.)
I'm not sure if those are more or less prevalent on Arch; I know that many IDEs and GUI programs I've installed on Arch ran by default in Flatpaks or similar, and Debian/Ubuntu like Snaps, but I'm honestly not familiar with whether those ecosystems have significant and/or equivalent penetration in different distros.
Who still uses Arch btw after this?
The AUR is not the Arch package manager or repository. The main Arch package repos are managed similarly to Debian, or Fedora, or whatever--caveat Arch's nature as a rolling release, but in terms of vetting and ownership/security, the approaches are similar. pacman installs from regular, real, vetted repositories by default. pacman will never install from the AUR. pacman is the official Arch package manager and the only one that is provided with the main Arch distribution/install instructions.
The AUR is, as many others have pointed out, a deliberately un-vetted pile of random Git repos. Arch deliberately doesn't even ship with a default one-click installer for AUR packages; their published guidance is "git clone this stuff from wherever it's hosted and build it at your own risk". Plenty of third-party, non-Arch-blessed tools turn that into a one-click process, but it's not "part" of Arch itself--at least not any more than, like, curl | bash or directions on how to add rando websites to /etc/apt/sources.list.d is part of Debian and friends.
I've used Arch as a daily driver for years. At peak, I've had five (5) total packages, with no transitives, installed from the AUR. Today I have one: sublime-text-4. It's perfectly possible--and extremely reasonable for many users, even power users--to live in an AUR-less world, or to use so few AUR packages that the guidance of "read what you're installing, doofus" is manageable and not onerous.
The AUR has consistently had warnings around it of 'verify the PKGBUILD', far more so than any other package repository that allows anyone to sign up. Probably the only notable difference is the ease of taking over an orphaned package.
If you want something from the AUR, just don't be lazy, read the pkgbuild.
I was not affected
I do, I'm just choosy about aur packages I use
I still do, I just don't touch AURs anymore.
Is there another distro that has an equivalent of the AUR with handling you think is preferable?
AUR is fast and loose and doesn't do much "handling" by design, so it's hard to find any equivalent repo. But there's always a tradeoff between fresh (nixpkgs unstable, might be the closest) and tested (Debian).
AUR isn't just the testing repo of Arch; it's explicitly just an open spot where anybody can put up "here's a PKGBUILD for folks". I don't see how it's like either the Nix or Debian examples.
Well, Nix has NUR which is a direct equivalent but it's not nearly as broadly used and I assume "here's a PKGBUILD for folks" is already too permissive for you if you're asking.
There's no maintainer vetting process in nixpkgs as far as I know, anyone can own a bunch of packages. There are quality standards and it's not "here's a bunch of nix code for folks" but it's the next possible thing in the line after that.
It seems like you may have mistakenly inferred that I have issues with the AUR?
I don't; I use Arch on 100% of my personal servers, have done so for something approaching 20 years, and don't see myself changing.
But I treat the AUR for what it is: a place where anybody can say "here's a PKGBUILD for folks" and it's on me to evaluate it on its merits.
I was legitimately asking the person upthread what other distro they felt had a better model for this kind of sharing, because they seemed to think this was a reason for Arch users to jump ship and I was curious what they thought would be the elements of a better system.
SlackBuilds.org is pretty sensible.
Gentoo
But let's hope we get this solved, like peer review model, vouch, or something
It is very good to be able to find build/install files for everything
Gentoo's model appears to be basically the same? Like the AUR, anybody can submit basically anything they want. The requirements amount to containing valid packages, having a bugzilla account, and putting your package definitions in VCS somewhere.