I love the idea of trying Debian but every time I try to ditch Arch for it I end up just giving up after not being able to find all the packages I need in the repos.

How do you guys deal with that? I’m not even talking about them being out of date. I’m talking about them missing altogether.

    • shapis@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      How does Distrobox work? Is it as simple a

      $ distrobox install app $ app

      And it runs fine ?

  • retrolasered@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Like what? I find that if its not in apt repo’s then there is normally a deb package available from the developer or it can be built from source. I know its not AUR but I find debian to be the best supported in most instances, with rpm based second. I dont use snap or flatpak really, but ive been able to install everything I would have wanted to.

  • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Usually, Flatpaks. My generally philosophy is that if it isn’t in Debian, it probably won’t last. I make exceptions when something is the best tool for the job, like Tom J Watson’s Emote.

    This isn’t not rock solid, I admit - there are plenty of defunct projects that were once in Debian repos (neofetch is still in sid), and there are plenty of lasting projects outside Debian.)

  • Hyacin (He/Him)@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Add repos as needed (Docker, Hashicorp, helm, kubernetes, etc.), build from source for everything else.

  • SolidGrue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    For me it depends in whether the publisher has a .deb file available or not. If there’s a downloadable deb file, I just install that through apt/dpkg.

    I try not to use custom repos anymore because they rarely keep up with the named releases and can introduce library conflicts.

    If I can only get a tarball of the precompiled binary then I’ll unpack it in /opt and drop a soft link to the main binary in /usr/local/bin. This is how I handle Firefox and Thunderbird at least.

    Otherwise, there’s containers (Unif controller, for example) and flatpacks as a last resort.

    I personally hate building and installing from source, but I’ll do that if I absolutely have to.