Like I get that they probably are reaching deep into the barrel to find anything that makes them special it’s not like they can fall back on their personalities, intelligence, appearance, or achievement.
This one detail is responsible for the kernel of sadness I feel for many on the far right. These are despicable people who were once kids who just wanted to be grownups and do grownup things. And whether due to genetics or due to upbringing, anything else that might have given them a sense of pride and competence is not something they have. As you say - all they have left is trying to push others down, hoping this lands them on top. Damn it’s truly sad.
I have to admit I am a little bit of a Gnome hater, because I was a very happy Gnome 2.6(?) user when they moved my cheese (and then moved it again, and again, and again) - Gnome was for me until they decided I wasn’t the kind of user they wanted anymore.
Having said that, I appreciate the point you are making, and I only (tangentially) referenced Gnome in my first comment because the contrast is huge. KDE likes you to use the system how you want. (and it’s one of the things I love about KDE) Gnome likes you to use the system how they want. That’s all there is to it, regardless of how reasonable the logic behind that distinction may be.
Wow, I don’t pay as much attention to developments in the space as I did a few years ago and I can see I should start to again. These are some pretty interesting distros you’ve linked.
Usually what you describe is what they do. Someone “owns” the AUR package (and it’s not quite literally any random user IIRC - you have to be accepted as an AUR maintainer I think) and they then take on the responsibility to repackage it whenever the author (you) releases a new version. There is also a mechanism for users to flag the AUR package as out of date in case that maintainer misses a release, and if they abandon it (or even if folks just don’t like how they package it) someone else can package it, assuming someone else wants to.
Sometimes the AUR maintainer is the dev themselves. I can’t think of a good example currently, but I know I’ve seen it before.
I don’t know the process for how things end up in the official repos, but I would guess it’s similar to however any other distros identify software they want to officially package.
When folks start wanting it, someone will package it for the AUR, or if it becomes even somewhat mainstream it will end up in the main repos eventually.
I haven’t done a vanilla arch install for years either, because if that sort of thing is fun for some folks great, but it was only fun once or twice for me. I think a lot of the vanilla arch faithful end up scripting it for fresh installs.
But, FWIW there’s always endeavouros, manjaro, and I’m sure other Arch derivatives I’ve forgotten about. I just did an endeavouros install on new hardware I was given last weekend, and it’s certainly no harder to install than Ubuntu.
I know you already got another answer, but - it’s very rare that any software for Linux exists that is both 1) not present in the official Arch repos, and also 2) not packaged by a user for the AUR.
Probably 99% of what a typical user (I know we all define that differently) will want doesn’t even require AUR access - it will be in the official Arch repositories and will be up to date to within a few weeks of release.
There are some potentially substantial downsides to the AUR (it’s the Arch USER Repository - so these are not official arch packages) but IME the real world problems are minimal. I would suggest anyone who is new to the Arch way of distributing software should hit up the relevant page on the Arch wiki and make up their own mind before using the AUR - but it’s about being aware of what you are doing more than it is a real warning, if that makes sense. I suspect few Arch or Arch-based users don’t have at least a smidgen of AUR packages on their system. (Edit: That page is very thorough. I think it makes installing from the AUR sound much harder than it needs to be. For most people the command is just “yay -S packagename.” There are gui options that handle all packages including AUR, and yay is not the only cli option, either.)
Interestingly, there are some AUR packages that work by pulling down the deb and deconstructing it for installation on your system - AFAIK it can be that, RPM, a true “compile from source” situation, or I’m guessing some AUR packages are deconstructing snaps\flatpaks\appimages during the install. Whatever the origin of the files, they include a pkgbuild file that tells your system how to either compile or deconstruct and install the software.