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Arch Linux's AUR Sees More Than 400 Packages Compromised With Malware
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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
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That is the whole purpose of AUR, users can create and share packages with minimum fuss. That does not mean that it is a good idea to run the code of some random guy on your computer.
But open source has always worked like that, by code sharing and collaboration - on tapes, on FTP servers, on Sourceforge or github and today on codeberg. The way the Arch User Repository (this is AUR spelled out) makes this easy is great!
Just don't run random code that you don't understand, and cannot reasonably trust.
Not from AUR.
Arch has 17,000 packages and is one of the largest distros. If you want more, you can use Debian, or perhaps Ubuntu if you really need non-free drivers and codecs, (or maybe NixOS, which has a fuckton of packages, but you won't get the same quality).
And what do you need so many packages for?
The Arch team is not responsible for this code.
And to add, demanding to do more work from volunteers which already do a lot of work for free is rude. If you want something done - do it yourself.