I am not really new to EndeavourOS, but I am sure there are still some questions worth asking to this beautiful community in order to better understand the system.
In particular, today I had a question about KDE’s official app store, Discover: on Linux, we are used to manage apps and programs via Terminal commands, especially on EndeavourOS, so I was wondering if app stores like Discover could be used aside. I installed it once a few weeks ago, and since then it proposed me to update some applications in the notifications centre.
I surprised myself feeling unconfortable about that: for months now I have been used to ask for updates, and not to be told to update. Furthermore, I use Pacman to manage applications, and I am not sure Discover does, too: can I update via Discover something that I installed via Pacman…?
So my questions are:
Is it safe to follow the notification’s instructions and update apps via Discover?
Is Discover (and any other software centre) safe to use on Arch-based distros in the first place?
Is there any possible advantage using Discover if we’re used to manage apps via terminal?
You can use discover to manage flatpaks and extensions. Don’t use it for system packages because it doesn’t handle manual interventions properly and can leave you with a broken system.
As I remember right, Discover was installed on Arch Linux when I tried Arch some weeks ago and installed via archinstall script. So, it should work but with Flatpaks only.
I don’t use Discover as it’s not preinstalled on eos nor is it recommended. I use the AUR via yay commands to install certain applications that are not in the Arch Repos. I also use pacman and pacseek.
So you can add Arch repos to KDE Discover by installing packagekit-qt6 but it is strongly discouraged because Discover can’t handle packages that require manual input (like selecting a vulkan driver for your GPU when installing Steam). But Discover does handle Flatpaks well.
