Does it really matter if I update through terminal or package managers?

General system Newbie
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Hello World,

Does it really matter if I update apps through a manager like Bauh/Octopi/whatever or should I really only ever do it through the welcome screen by clicking the “Update system (yay)” option(which I believe is the same thing as opening the terminal and manually typing in “yay”)?

Also can you please explain why one way would be better then the other?
The only thing I’ve learned so far searching the forums about this is that your app manager might not check all repositories, whereas yay is supposed to check all repos including aur packages. Is that accurate and is that it, or is there something more?

Thank you.

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I guess as long as you don’t use anything which runs packagekit in the background it should be alright, generally speaking, to use a graphical package manager like the ones you mentioned above.

Warning: PackageKit opens up system permissions by default, and is otherwise not recommended for general usage. See FS#50459 and FS#57943.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Tips_and_tricks#Graphical

However, for better user control, I would always prefer the terminal over any other graphical package managers.

yay is a pacman wrapper with AUR support. So yes, with yay you can manage packages from sources specified in your /etc/pacman.conf and also those from AUR.

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I see, ok, thank you. Thankfully I haven’t tried anything that uses PackageKit yet, and now I’ll know to stay away from that.

I’m basically down to just using Bauh and the terminal(with yay or pacman commands) for anything that doesn’t work with Bauh.

This actually did affect me once(assuming the following is an example of what you are talking about) when I tried to install something with Bauh it got to a step where it encountered a conflict with a dependency because of a different version that was already installed. And on the question whether to remove it Bauh(I guess this is how it’s configured) was automatically selecting “no”, so the installation would fail. :frowning:

But when I tried to install it with the terminal and got to that question I had the option of what to select, so I answered “yes” and it worked and the app installed without problems after that. :slight_smile:

So I guess you do have a point and maybe I should try to learn to give the terminal more preference in these matters, it’s just intimidating as a beginner… :pleading_face:

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Using the terminal will put you in the front seat of controlling your system. You will see in “real time” what is going on when you run a command, in this case an update command and you will have the chance to intervene in time if that is necessary.

I would encourage you, even as a beginner, to get acquainted to how system management is done via terminal.

I’ll put some link here below which should serve as a start point. Take your time and read through them at your pace. Ask here in the forum if anything is unclear and you would need further explanations and/or assistance.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Frequently_asked_questions#System_maintenance

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Frequently_asked_questions#Package_management

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_User_Repository

You could also always use the terminal to view the help and manual pages for a CLI tool, for example:

pacman --help
man pacman 
yay --help
man yay
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Cool, thanks, I’ll check those pages out when I have the time. :slight_smile:

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Ok, here’s one of those questions, specially since you are the same person who recommended me yt-dlp(a terminal app, sigh) in the other thread, isn’t \ supposed to be used instead of space if you have a directory that has spaces in it’s name? Isn’t that what I read on the internet?

So if I use

yt-dlp --no-cache-dir --merge-output-format mp4 --paths /mnt/Local\Disk\D/Stuff/Stiri\ProTV/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfGYJoBv0rk

why the heck does it keep creating folders instead of sending the file where I’m telling it to?!?! :rage:

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You\ still\ put\ the\ spaces\ in\ after\ the\ backslashes\ :smile:

You can also “put the/whole filepath/in quotes/if you/have a lot/of spaces and/adding all the backslashes/is annoying” :laughing:

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:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: Seriously the way to replace the space is to put \ and then still add the space?! !? hahahahahah, ahhh man I’m coughing from laughing so much/hard… :frowning:

Well what the hell kind of sense does that make, who tought of it?!

LE: Ok, well I tested the “” approach, that works at least. Think I’ll just stick to that from now on… :wink:

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I am not a terminal pro so my explanation is very basic, but essentially:

The \ tells the terminal “this is all part of the same command please don’t treat this space as anything other than a space”, since the default behaviour is to assume that every separate ‘word’ entered into it is a fresh instruction, or argument for the previous instruction.

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Aha, still doesn’t the way it actually works seem a bit… what’s the word, redundant? Couldn’t they have thought of something better? :face_with_monocle:

LE: How about ~ that used for antyhing important? If not couldn’t that be used, just~one~character~instead~of~two~for~every~space?

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