i hate that it's very often like this

I don't care I use Arch BTW. Someone would have made a AUR package for it by now.

As someone who's used debian based distros for 20+ years now, I see no issue with this. ;)

That's where the AUR comes in. Some neckbeard somewhere has already made an AUR package of that.

Even worse: the .deb file's dependences are only available in a specific version of Ubuntu LTS or with PPAs.

Nothing Distrobox can't fix. I can run AUR, RPM, and even those deb files that only run on Ubuntu for some damn reason on my Debiain system.

It's probably already in your default repos too.

Ain’t my fault you forgot about dpkg -i ;-)

Give it 2 days and chances are someone has already published a PKGBUILD in the AUR

This is why you use glorious Debian.

Thankfully RHEL/Centos/Fedora also get attention thanks to the large corporate influence.

Anything else can just be compiled from scratch, after spending 6 hours trying to figure out what ajfiwn-0-libs-dev is in redhat land, only to find out it was libfiwn-devel all along.

stick it into a distrobox container and then package that into a flatpak on the AUR. 😎👍

Only n00bs install packages. Cool people compile from source.

I don't know what the Linux community's consensus on appimages are, but I wouldn't mind if people made more appimages because, for the few distros I've used, appimages just usually work.

BlendOS Will let you install virtually any package format through containerization, but it shows up just as if it was a native app. It's pretty neat to see and I hope more distros adopt this

Debtap is suprisingly easy to use after switching to arch (highly recommend), but i actually love .deb files. Obviously it's a slight risk to the user in the similar way dot EXE's can be for windows , but they really do simplify package management for when you're newer to linux.

Someone explain this to my dumb ass.

Where distrobox

And again... Distrobox is your friend. Me, I like an immutable OS (kinoite) but I still want the AUR…

distrobox-create --name arch --image archlinux:latest
distrobox enter arch
install yay as normal
yay -S vscodium
distrobox-export --app vscodium
yay exa
distrobox-export --bin /usr/sbin/exa
exit [back to kinoite]
exa [works]
vscodium [works, has icon in application launcher]

Try it, you might like it !

My dumbass without DistroBox:

$ ar x package.deb

Ah, a wild deb-file. Let's add it to my frankendebian.

As someone who’s never used Linux, TIL that software doesn’t work across all flavours of Linux.

So what? You don't know how to unpack .deb?

su alien yourprogram.deb

The true solution is... build from source.

If you use arch that isnt a problem

just run it through alien and hope

I'll give you one more, what about software that doesn't package it at all and gives you a tar?

Yehaa, a .deb file, letz install and just have fun

i'm pretty sure you can extract them with ar x and get the binary

laughs in docker

FROM debian:bookworm

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y the-deb

the struggle is real

Signal's shitty electron app.

Isn't deb just a compressed file? Can't you just decompress it, check its dependencies and install it yourself?

No offense, but debs are just objectively better than rpms. I use both

Distrobox, our hero

?!? I'm not sure to understand this post? I will only install stuff that are .deb, not big image or snap or whatever?!?

What's the problem with deb when you are using debian based distro? Else you can easily extract the content and cp it in place

me, who definitely knows how to and in fact totally prefers to build everything from source: [nervous laughter] yeah what kinda dingus exclusively uses .debs amirite?

Or:

Software has a Linux version and it only comes as a .deb

Depends on a load of packages exclusive to Ubuntu and installing it on stock Debian is bloody impossible

Yeah I remember when Steam came to Linux. Never got it to work. I hope it is better nowadays? (Sadly can't check. My only pure Linux box at the moment is a Raspberry Pi, I don't expect Steam to run on that either)

Compile it from source?

With my finger on the trigger / I run dot slash configure / yo this package is big / but my package is bigger

debtap exists

ahem ahem discord

Try the VanillaOS 2.0 alpha?

https://handbook.vanillaos.org/2023/01/11/install-and-manage-applications.html