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The security situation with the Arch Linux AUR got a lot worse
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026
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I don't use CachyOS nor do I know anything about their team and I haven't used the script either. My point was just that I would trust OS maintainers more than some random guy on the internet.
I have checked again and it seems the script I was referring to was actually from a mod on their community forum. Not sure if this is a maintainer as well or not.
My point still stands, if you trust the source and checked the code that nothing shady is going on, it is perfectly fine to run a script. Even if it is just an additional check after you cleaned it manually. Maybe you have missed something.
You are right that the distribution as it provides binary code is a trust root. If you can't trust them, you have nothing to stand on.
I had the impression that CachyOS suggests to use AUR packages - maybe I am wrong here?
And if CachyOS is (what I am just assuming) geared towards less technical users, can you really expect their average user to examine shell scripts from a forum post?
How do their users even know that the post and its author is legitimate? Are they supposed to check PGP keys?
You can call that paranoid but there is a reason why distributions use packkage signing, publish webs of trust, and why the Guix developers even worked hard to reduce the binary bootstrapping code for the distro down to 512 bytes - it is a consequence of the "trusting trust" problem posed by Ken Thompson that the more stuff is opaque, the more trust is needed.