Hello,
On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 11:44:15AM -0400, deb wrote:
Are there list-suggested ways to help verify non-free / out-of-stable-distro
or even seldomly updated in-distro tools, PRE-INSTALL?
If in your /etc/apt/sources.list you stick to one distribution and
don't include "contrib" and "non-free" suites then you aren't going
to get any non-free software and the packages you install will at
least have been considered acceptable by Debian for release.
Are there suggested sites to look up Linux tools to verify them a bit;
rather than just one-off searches?
Are there suggested sites where KNOWN BAD tools are listed?
That all sounds highly subjective and don't see how you could have
any such definitive thing.
There is no substitute for proper research but as a blunt tool, once
you have identified multiple different packages that do what you
want you could look at Debian's popcon to compare how many reported
installations there are of each of them:
https://popcon.debian.org/
Cheers,
Andy