Debian is not kept as up to date as arch. There's also no AUR equivalent. AUR had Steam for Linux packaged for example about 2h after the official release, with people adding the missed dependencies very shortly.
Also not having many prescribed defaults is sometimes nice. I want KDE with that display manager / lockscreen. And I can have it without uninstalling some metapackage which will make updates harder in the future. (like gnome-desktop on Ubuntu)
I haven't used slack for over a decade, so can't really comment.
Also until recently it was one of the few distros with nicely integrated grsec kernel. :-(
Well Debian stable, but you can sync up to testing, unstable or experimental (if you want bleeding edge) for newer packages and have a rolling release.
I'm running Kubuntu right now, not that I'm a huge ubuntu fan, but it has the latest KDE plasma desktop with the debian package manager if you just want a KDE that works with minimal effort plus a kick ass package manager and you can upgrade without reinstalling like Fedora. I know how to do stuff manually, I'm old lol, but I use Linux as my main desktop OS and have been for years. More years than I like to think about because it just reminds me how old I am now. It's nice to just be able to install a distro and be up and running in a few hours instead of a few days. You can add grsec (are anything else kernel related) to any distro, just compile a kernel. If your going for the retro thing, Slack and BSD's is the way to go. I guess what I'm getting at is what need is Arch trying to fulfill?
As you said, you could get grsec in any distro by recompiling kernel. In Arch it was available immediately as a package. People took care of updating it / applying the new releases.
Just install it yourself. I don't get what the big deal is. If you have to edit a bunch of config files then just do it yourself. If you want something straight forward there are better options. If you want something closer to traditional *NIX there are better options. If Arch is your thing that's cool, but as an oldish (41) Linux user that's been using Linux primarily since the late 90's I'm not sure what Arch is going for. I'm not trying to be harsh, but honestly I just don't quite get what Arch is doing. It seems to introduce an added level of complexity that specific to Arch. If your into that sort of thing, there's better options. If your looking for something easier there's better options. I just don't get it. lol
I said grsec was available in few distros prebuilt. Debian was in that group as well.
It may not be for you. I ended up packaging new libraries every few weeks on other distros. Debian experimental included. Arch solves that problem for me. I guess Gentoo, nixos, and others would do that as well. But this one's my choice.
Mixing names. Community repo is different from AUR. The first has rules, the second one is a free for all.
AUR steam was missing dependencies in a way that specific installed apps weren't functioning right, but that's not something you could figure out from the binary itself. For example Portal depended on texture compression which wasn't included by default. Without buying everything in the Steam store you wouldn't know that.
The good thing was that it was corrected within a day. How long does a typical distro bug report take, before it's even looked at?
This is also Arch, but I just yesterday reported a bug to the distro maintainers because the upgrade to Perl 5.26 broke my monitoring. A fixed package was published into the repo within 3 hours: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/54322
I guess I got lucky though. A turnaround time that short for community projects also depends on whether the contributor in question happens to be at his desk at that point.
He's talking about the AUR not the official community repo. It was tested on the AUR and the feedback was integrated to identify the dependencies. It's since graduated from the AUR to the official community repo.
The AUR has pretty much everything, community maintained. The arch build system makes it trivial to package something no matter where it comes from. You can use it to repackage a .deb or a .rpm (it'll even download it from its official home and verify checksums), or a project from a git repo, for specific releases, or tracking a branch, or what have you.
There's all kinds of software on the AUR and it's all up to date. The official repos also move very fast, compared to other distros.
Read about a new feature in a recent version of some software you use? Just update, it's probably already landed in arch. You don't have to wait six months for a release window to install software that's already ready.
I didn't say "official community repo", but "community repo", because I don't know about Arch.
Then you're calling this repo which I must not name community repo "community-maintained". So it is a community repo.
All while people in this thread advertise for Arch because this community non-community repo is so awesome. But when things break people are not allowed to take it into account.
If you try to lure people with this AUR, at least own its failures, not only its successes.
Nothing you've pointed at is a failure, it's simply the process. How can you call up in two hours, rapidly tested and brought to 100% shortly thereafter, a failure? How can using the software you want to use immediately after its release ever be called a failure? Success is waiting for two months for a release window? No thank you.
I simply find it remarkable that someone actually chose this failure for his advertising. There are certainly many instances of quick turnaround times that don't center on failure.
Packages go to the 'testing' repository to allow checking for thing being broken. They usually only stay there for a short time (a week or so, often less).
Also not having many prescribed defaults is sometimes nice. I want KDE with that display manager / lockscreen. And I can have it without uninstalling some metapackage which will make updates harder in the future. (like gnome-desktop on Ubuntu)
I haven't used slack for over a decade, so can't really comment.
Also until recently it was one of the few distros with nicely integrated grsec kernel. :-(