FYI: the Linux installation script for Ollama works in the "standard" style for tooling these days:
curl https://ollama.ai/install.sh | sh
However, that script asks for root-level privileges via sudo the last time I checked. So, if you want the tool, you may want to download the script and have a look at it, or modify it depending on your needs.
They have manual install instructions [0], and judging by those, what it does is set up a SystemD service that automatically runs on startup. But if you're just looking to play around, I found that downloading [1], making it executable (chmod +x ollama-linux-amd64), and then running it, worked just fine. All without needing root.
do package managers make promises that they only distribute code that's been audited to not pwn you? I'm not sure I see the difference if I decided I'm going to run someone's software whether I install it with sudo apt install vs sudo curl | bash
You are already trusting the maintainers of your distro by running Software they compiled, if you installed anything via the package manager. So it's about the number of people.
This only applies to software distributed by your distro. For something as novel as Ollama, I severely doubt it's made it into anything other than the most bleeding edge(Arch and co). You'll have to wait a few years to get it into mainline Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. and of course it will be at a set version.
