Any recommend pamac-aur settings for the average user?

Greetings lovely community,

I tend to use both a mix of the Tilix terminal and pamac-aur application to search, update, install/remove packages, etc. The terminal part of it I understand for the most part (not always of course!), but for pamac-aur I wonder if the default settings are the way to go or if the settings I adjusted in pamac-aur are acceptable, please do let me know your opinions. I just want to double check and make sure I’m doing things the “correct way” aka in a way that won’t cause unintended issues in the future.

Below is a rundown of my pamac-aur settings. Please let me know if my adjusts are acceptable or if I need to change or revert any of the changes I made, thank you. Also, feel free to explain any of the settings if you so wish to, I do enjoy reading and learning more about EndeavourOS and the underlying Arch-base!

Screenshot from 2021-07-29 22-37-38
Screenshot from 2021-07-29 22-37-48
Screenshot from 2021-07-29 22-37-57

I did have one final thought come to mind. I know the /etc/pacman.conf file has parallel downloads set to “5” however pamac-aur only has a setting for 1,2,4,6,8,10. I don’t know if this is conflicting in any sort of way, like if I should change the pacman.conf to “4” or just leave them be since they are separate.

Also, I don’t know if it means anything, but in the above screenshot I have enabled the “downgrade” option, but before I did that I had installed the downgrade package from the EndeavourOS repos. I don’t know if pamac-aur uses that repo package for downgrades that I installed or what, so any clarification here would be appreciated.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and help me get more familiar and better situated with this lovely Linux system.

I use pamac and on the first panel i have remove only the uninstalled packages?
The second panel i have all on.
The third panel i have same.

I don’t know what is right or wrong here? Yes i think you did the right thing installing the downgrade package. Without it i don’t think it would work as it is required for pacman to downgrade a package. As far as the parallel downloads I don’t think it’s an issue. Matter of fact i have tried WAY higher parallel downloads without issue not that I’m recommending it. I just tested it out when that change came in but, i also have very fast Internet. Some don’t.

Edit2: I don’t use the software mode which i thought gives flatpacks and snaps but that is on another version of pamac i think.

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Thanks for the reply mate! What does it mean exactly “remove only the uninstalled packages” like what does an example of that look like? I’ve gone ahead and mimic’d your pamac settings, so if I ever have any problems, I’ll know exactly who to blame :stuck_out_tongue: (kidding of course!)

I guess maybe @dalto can answer that better. I’m not exactly sure but i thought if it’s uninstalled then why wouldn’t i want to? :man_shrugging: Maybe it’s the build packages? You can blame me. I can take it! :laughing: I make lots of mistakes …no worries. I’m no expert by any means.

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No worries, we’ll wait for the almighty @dalto to hit us with some wise knowledge on the matter I’m cuz both curious and confused lol :slight_smile:

Sometimes i wait until i destroy something. Then i ask why did that happen? :upside_down_face:

Edit: I wouldn’t mind some of that Tennessee Whiskey though! :wink:

I’ve actually been sober over 2 years now, but if you’ve had some American whiskey before, I can always happily recommend Kentucky’s own Jim Beam as a great choice. There’s definitely a lot of smaller distilleries popping up all over the place now, so I’m very much out of the loop on what’s the latest, like Chattanooga Whiskey 111 is apparently great, though I’ve never tried it!

But to stay on course, I looked up some of the Manjaro wiki on pamac and they had this to say:

By selecting “Remove only the versions of uninstalled packages” pamac will retain all versions of packages you still have installed.

Source: Manjaro Pamac Wiki

Still a bit unsure of what that means in a practical sense, but hopefully that clears it up a little bit more for you. I guess it sounds like it will ignore only have say 3 versions of a package in your cache and instead keep all versions, which will fill up your cache over time, or I could be misunderstanding it. I think if that’s the case though, I’d probably uncheck that option for myself because I really only want to keep about 3 versions of a package in case of a temporary downgrade situation ya know.

Not to go off topic but I commend you on that and happy for you. I was listening to Tennessee Whiskey by Chris Stapleton so that is what i meant. Manjaro is good source of info since pamac is kind of their package.

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From your screenshots, there are a couple of things I would change.

On the advanced tab, disable “Enable downgrade”. You should never downgrade packages in an automated fashion. That can break your system. Downgrading packages should be something you choose to do manually.

On the AUR page, enable “Check for development package updates”. Otherwise most *-git packages won’t get updated properly.

No, they don’t need to match.

It doesn’t use downgrade.

That refers to the package cache. pacman/pamac save a copy of the packages you install on your system. If you don’t prune them, that directory will continually grow over time. Those options are about how it gets cleaned up.

“remove only the uninstalled packages” means it will only remove packages from your cache that you no longer have installed.

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Thanks for that clarification. I always thought it would be something related to the “real” downgrade command.

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Thank you very much for the lengthy reply, that really clears a lot of it up I wasn’t sure about. I’ve adjusted my settings accordingly (i.e. disabled downgrade and enabled check for development package updates). I don’t currently have any git packages, but it’s good to know to enable that for when I do. As per @ricklinux i’ve also enabled from my original screenshot in the advanced tab, enabled remove unrequired dependencies and enabled do no check for updates when installing, I trust these settings are okay to have enabled? ( @ricklinux dude disable downgrade before he finds out what we’ve done! :stuck_out_tongue: )

A quick follow up to the “remove only the uninstalled packages” I’m still unsure about. So if it’s enabled, it’ll keep just 3 versions still or it’ll keep ALL version of a package and only ever uninstall a package once I’ve uninstalled it or does it just uninstall orphans or something? I’d like to simply just have 3 backup versions saved just in case I ever do need to revert anything till a fix comes out. Thanks again for all your assistance, you’ve been tremendously helpful!

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I don’t always agree with @dalto because he knows everything. I just take his advice and sulk! :rofl:

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I remember that one time when @dalto was wrong. I forgot what it was about, and I can’t find the post… :confused:

But I’m sure it happened! :rofl:

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Your right i do remember. But i didn’t want to bring it up. Now you are going to have to deal with the wrath of @dalto. Good luck! :rofl:

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So you remember it, too. Good, I wasn’t dreaming then :rofl:

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Personally, I would recommend reversing both of those but it is, of course, a personal decision. Here is my reasoning:

  • Removing orphans isn’t something most people want to do automatically. In my experience it will sometimes want to remove optional dependencies or there are things that become inadvertently orphaned such as when you remove a meta package. I like to remove orphans deliberately so I can carefully review what it is removing. I also don’t think doing it often is useful. In the case of build dependencies you will just be constantly be installing and removing them. I usually remove orphans a few times per year.
  • Installing software without updating first can put you in a partial update situation. Conversely, checking for updates if there aren’t any takes little to no time so I think it is best practice to leave that option enabled.

Keep in mind, the package cache is not your installed packages. It is copies of the original files that were downloaded from the repos. That option doesn’t uninstall anything, it just deletes those files.

I believe the way that option works is that, when enabled, it will only delete the files of packages you no longer have installed but I would have to read the code to be sure.

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In all the time i have used pamac i haven’t had any issues with having the settings this way. I typically don’t do much downgrading anyway and haven’t used pamac for that purpose but i do have it set that way. I have never tried it but maybe someday i might. :grin: Sometimes i do use pamac and delete all the orphans and i haven’t had any issues with it? Same as it deleting cache. I think pamac does a pretty good job and i realize doing things your way is better but i also understand there are a lot of users like myself included who don’t have the knowledge and tend to rely on GUI tools to do some of these things. I use pamac sometimes to remove packages and it does handle the dependency issues quite well. Sometimes i would rather take the chance on pamac then using pacman as i am never quite sure at times if i do the right thing. I’ve not had many issues myself but i also don’t tend to do a lot of package removal. Only when it is necessary.

Okay here’s another adjust of the pamac settings I made. I appreciate your responses and agree with your reasoning(s) @dalto so I’ve adjusted my settings accordingly. Just to recap and confirm that things are good to go now, here is the result of my pamac settings currently (hope it’s all good to go now!):
Screenshot from 2021-07-30 11-35-41
Screenshot from 2021-07-30 11-35-52
Screenshot from 2021-07-30 11-36-03

If this all looks satisfactory now (i.e. safely enough to keep my system out of harms away) according to you, feel free to give me a thumbs up or something :slight_smile:

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I’m somewhat of a similar user as yourself, though I do appreciate using the terminal for most of my installing/removing, yay/system updating, etc. since I’m able to see any critical errors pop up. Generally speaking, errors don’t come across my screen very often, but on occasion there will be something I’m curious about or unsure of and it definitely helps to have that terminal output handy to be able to use that, copy it, and attach it to the forums for someone to either confirm the error/issue at hand or possibly fix it if need be. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think pamac is just a GUI front-end for the pacman terminal commands, so perhaps try using the terminal every time you pacman -Syu or flatpak update and start to slowly branch out to other commands to get a better feel and understanding for it all. EndeavourOS is terminal based after all, so while I am reliant on a GUI option like pamac, I do want to use it how its intended so I get the best user and learning experience. Just a bit of my two cents! But if you’re totally happy and convinced of your absolute pamac ways, I can’t stop you. Though, I can point and snicker at you if ever a problem arises (hopefully it never comes to that though!) :wink:

@dalto Thanks very much again mate! You are an invaluable person to have in these lovely forums!

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Unlike repo packages, flatpaks should be safe to automatically update. I just use a systemd timer that updates my flatpaks every hour.

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