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searching for FLOSS packages in arch-based distro? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I find it surprising that this data, which as you say is available is impossible to display except by going on one by one investigations. It is too time-consuming to be reasonably accomplished. Especially when you consider going up the dependency chain. I am hoping someone can point me to a reasonable way to go about it. If none exists I do feel like its just not a priority for the whole community. I couldn't even find anything about this by scouring the usually-helpful arch wiki. I don't find any gists or other scripts, no forum posts, nothing .

I have not been much of a distro-hopper, just using ubuntu/debian and now manjaro for years. Maybe I will switch. I strongly prefer the pacman situation to apt. I never looked into any of the other options though so maybe there is something suitable.