i’ve been messing around in my new endeavouros for a few days and i cant get something right. my idea was to install endeavouros and then open up a add/remove type program that will let me remove and add programs to the install. so say like i want to open that program and browse though the available programs and see what is available to install and the descriptions ect. i have tried to use ways to install through terminal but once installed i expected to see a gui but there was no gui. i did a default install of endeavouros for the base as suggested during the install.
i have tried so many things i really cant remember them all so i will start from scratch once i know how to end up where i want to be
If you need a GUI, pamac is probably your best bet. None of this will ever come packaged with an Endeavour install, since it’s completely unnecessary. And you should really do updates from terminal regardless, even if you install from pamac.
None of the gui apps are all that good honestly, you’re much better off just installing packages from arch/aur with pacman/yay. There’s a LOT of threads about this.
Octopi is an alternate GUI I use, it reminds me of Synaptic from Debian-based distros. It’s pretty useful for quickly listing any package’s installed files and its info and links, as well as the AUR.
Since GUIs are not perfect, I take a more hybrid approach. The command line is still the fastest and most reliable (especially for system updates).
oh wow iam totally impressed with how fast u guys respond and are willing to help out, that makes a huge difference to me.
so not being totally sure what i all did with all my messing around let me put a fresh install and take it from there. will say that the stuff i did install or atleast think i installed was very very easy not a pain at all.
Another option is bauh. It is a simple package manager that allows to install and update software in a variety of formats.
If you are more interested in software discovery, pamac is probably better for that but there are some pitfalls given limitations in Arch’s appstream data.
Another option for finding software is this section of the Arch wiki which has categorized descriptions of common packages.
There is one ISO for all desktops.
But did you mean you installed Xfce in the offline install mode?
Anyway, to answer your question: you can proceed with Xfce or any other DE.
And keep your install updated, either with command
sudo pacman -Syu
or if you have installed also AUR packages, then
yay
Note that updates are coming daily, even many times a day.
So you don’t have to update every hour, but as a rule of thumb, at least once a week.
Updating more often doesn’t hurt either.
And if you have questions or issues, do not hesitate to ask!
There is only one ISO. We don’t have separate ISOs per environment.
If you do an offline install, you will get XFCE. If you do an online install, you can choose whichever environment you prefer and that is what will be installed.
For software discovery, I prefer pamac-aur-git. My second choice is bauh, which also lists flatpak and appimage apps that are not in the arch or aur repos, but isn’t quite as intuitive as Pamac but seems not to break as much. In my opinion Octopi is a distant third choice for discovery/browsing, but works ok for other package management chores.
However, for install and updates, using yay (or one of its alternatives like paru or pikaur) is probably your best bet. Yay is the most popular and comes pre-installed with EndeavourOS, so it should be your first option. Plenty of time to explore the others if you stick around for the long haul.
As an Endeavour newbie, following one of the articles or tutorials to install Pamac is probably your best bet. Installing it gives you a taste of what you can expect from a terminal centric distribution and then using Pamac/bauh gives you an idea of what software is available and a chance to kick the tires on this distro before investing the time to learn “the way of the terminal.” Once you decide you like it here, then you can invest the time and effort to learn the Arch/EndeavourOS way of terminal centric installs/updates/removals. And you will have your own opinion of using a GUI software install program - they have gotten much better since many opinions were formed, so you may not feel the need to be as terminal centric as the majority here are. The terminal is still optimal if you have time to learn and use this distro enough to remain proficient in its use.
Pamac works really well. Great GUI to check for available updates, clear caches, search for programs and see their descriptions.
If you prefer GUI, get GUI programs. EOS may be terminal-centric, but it’s still Linux and you can do whatever to it to make it yours. For me it became much better to use with GUI. It’s enough to learn a couple basic commands, but no more than that should be required to use a computer.
Pkgbroswer is great for packages - not so great for discovering Applications - which of course may be made of many packages. Great if you know what you are doing and prefer a GUI to the command line, not so great if you are new and kicking the tires to see what is available. Tkpacman is similiar - great if you prefer to use a gui instead of pacman, not so great for other things like browsing. Both are solid. Best usecase for them as I see it would be if you spend most of your life in other distros and don’t have yay/pacman commands and options memorized. These programs allow you to do all those functions without knowing pacman’s syntax. Tkpacman doesn’t support AUR like Pamac and Octopi, nor does it support AppImage or flatpak. Of course, most of us here don’t like the bloat of AppImage and/or flatpak and prefer to use native packaging, but everyone has different needs and your might need/want them.
I do like both programs mentioned by ringo, and they are definitely more stable than some of the others that we have mentioned; I just don’t think they meet the need of the original questioner. One thing that tkpacman is great for is learning pacman. You can click boxes in a GUI, and then when you execute the various actions, a terminal opens and you can see the actual pacman commands in a terminal window. It helps out while you are learning pacman.
ok
