this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
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You can still select just those packages out of their repos. Obviously that can get tedious if there are a lot of them. But that's pretty rare and at that point it's worth asking, is that software really worth it? Is there a better installation method? Could it live in a cheoot/container?
But that's not just in the Apt world, any system wide install would behave like that.
It's not an issue on Arch & derivates, due to the simple fact I mentioned above: third-party (AUR) packages are never allowed to use the name of an official package.
If a third-party package was already using a name that a new official package wishes to use, users are required to willingly uninstall the third-party package in order to be allowed to install the official one, and can never re-install the third-party package unless it changes its name.
It also helps that there's only one third-party repo (the AUR) so it prevents name overlaps among third-party packages. Although that's of secondary importance since it can be bypassed by crafting custom packages locally.
I appreciate the difficulty of enacting such a rule on Debian or Ubuntu now, considering the vast amount of already existing, widely established third-party repos, and also the fact that Debian official repos contain 3-4 times as many packages as Arch official repos. Which is why I think there's no way to fix this aspect of Debian/Ubuntu anymore.
I'm not saying that makes them unusable... but I believe that anybody who uses them should be [made] aware of this caveat. It's not readily apparent and by the time it bites a new user she's probably already invested a couple of years in them.