diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 44f7af4d09..4fb421eb2e 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -37,7 +37,6 @@ Imports:
 Suggests:
     bookdown,
     crayon,
-    fs,
     httr (>= 1.2.1),
     jsonlite,
     mockery,
@@ -48,8 +47,8 @@ Suggests:
     testthat (>= 3.0.0),
     tibble,
     tufte,
-    usethis,
-    withr (>= 2.5.0)
+    withr (>= 2.5.0),
+    xfun
 VignetteBuilder: 
     knitr
 Config/Needs/website: tidyverse/tidytemplate
diff --git a/R/use_lintr.R b/R/use_lintr.R
index 2586645d8c..7c3eb099d3 100644
--- a/R/use_lintr.R
+++ b/R/use_lintr.R
@@ -45,12 +45,30 @@ use_lintr <- function(path = ".", type = c("tidyverse", "full")) {
   write.dcf(the_config, config_file, width = Inf)
 
   # If this is an R package and if available, add .lintr file to .Rbuildignore
-  if (file.exists("DESCRIPTION")) {
+  if (file.exists("DESCRIPTION") && file.exists(".Rbuildignore")) {
     try(
-      usethis::use_build_ignore(fs::path_rel(config_file)),
+      add_build_ignore(config_file),
       silent = TRUE
     )
   }
 
   invisible(config_file)
 }
+
+add_build_ignore <- function(path) {
+  path_build_ignore <- ".Rbuildignore"
+  existing_lines <- xfun::read_utf8(path_build_ignore)
+
+  escape_path <- gsub("^\\./", "", path)
+  escape_path <- gsub("\\.", "\\\\.", escape_path)
+  escape_path <- gsub("/$", "", escape_path)
+  escape_path <- paste0("^", escape_path, "$")
+
+  new_lines <- c(existing_lines, setdiff(escape_path, existing_lines))
+
+  xfun::write_utf8(new_lines, path_build_ignore)
+
+  message("Add '", escape_path, "' to ", path_build_ignore)
+
+  invisible(NULL)
+}