this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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searching for FLOSS packages in arch-based distro? (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 7 months ago by linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.de to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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I've been using manjaro for a couple of years and I really like it. especially the wide variety of packages available. Recently been using yay to find/install.

I prefer to run FLOSS packages when they are available. But I do not find a convenient way to preferentially seek these out. Even to know what licenses apply without individually researching each specific package.

It does not seem to be possible to search, filter or sort based on license in the web interface for packagegs or AUR. I do not find anything about it in man pacman(8) or man yay(8).

The only way I have found to find license info from the terminal is using expac. You can use %L to display the license. I guess you could combine this in a search to filter, similar to some of the examples listed on pacman/Tips and tricks - ArchWiki. But I haven't quite got it to work.

This seems like something other people would want but I don't find any available solution for it. Am I missing something? Or is it something with the arch-based distros?

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[–] EddyBot@feddit.de 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

People who deeply care about this typically use a distro which has a strong stance on FLOSS software like Debian or Fedora
Arch Linux is more free on this as long as the user gets a more conveniant way to install everything (even proprietary software)

the Arch Linux way however is also reading every PKGBUILD (where the license is stated) before installing and if you need to have an easier way to search through licenses just programatically solve this yourself i.e. by using https://github.com/archlinux/aur and going through all branches with a script

[–] Evkob@lemmy.ca 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Seeing "Ubuntu" and "strong stance on Free, Libre, Open-Source Software software" in the same sentence is confusing to say the least.

[–] EddyBot@feddit.de 0 points 7 months ago

sorry that was a blunder on my part, I wanted to say "Debian and Fedora" but autocorrect gotten a hold on me it seems