Pacman vs Pamac

I’m using pamac. Is there a reason I should switch to pacman?

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There are many reasons, for example:

pacman is the Arch package manager.

However, if Pamac works for you then use whatever works. :woman_shrugging:

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pacman is the Arch package manager. It is best to use pacman as a general rule but yay is used for installling packages from the AUR.

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But I have full access to the AUR through Pamac as well and it has a nice GUI

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I use it too…i’m not knocking it just pointing out that pacman is your friend. Know it well.

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If you like pamac, use it. There is no reason to exclusively use pacman, but you should be familiar with it in case your system ever gets borked and you have to fix it from the terminal.

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i use tkpacman :stuck_out_tongue: oops thats just frontend… :slight_smile:

but i like that debianish style also… as stability updating pacman is better. most time you are depended on upstream so you have to take that with care, updating importand things with pacman is prior , fur ther using is on your own :slight_smile:

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Another key thing in pacman’s favour:

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pacman-static/

This will always work. It’s a single 5MB file, so you can make sure you have a working pacman somewhere.

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It is simply a better tool for package managing your system, but you will need to invest time to learn it.

As mentioned above pacman will be the only tool available to you to repair a non booting system via chroot. For this reason alone you should learn to use it, eventually you will need it.

You should never update your system using Pamac, ever. Install and remove packages from there if you must, but all updates should be done using pacman.

Or trizen … :wink:

Or git clone (install), git pull (update) and makepkg (build and install) for the purists.

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My advice is you should use whatever you prefer to use. If you like pamac, be happy and enjoy using it. :partying_face:

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When I first started, I installed yay and found it very easy - so I didn’t see the point of pamac.

I use pacman for doing my initial upgrades, but I use yay to install and I follow my updates by running topgrade.

Certainly everyone should learn the proper pacman syntax - Syu, Syyu, Syy can be confusing. I prefer typing ‘yay code’ and choosing an option to ‘pamac install code’ or ‘pacman -S code’.

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There are good reasons to learn to use pacman: it is the superior package manager.

However, if you are using pamac and it works for you, are happy with it, who am I to tell you to use something you like less? :slight_smile:

Be aware that there have been countless reports of pamac breaking an update, or failing to completely remove packages and dependencies. These are fairly minor and not too common annoyances, so if you have no such experiences, and really like the GUI of pamac, I don’t think there is any point in trying to convince you not to use it.

You are not harming anyone by using pamac, so do what makes you happy :smiley:

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If something goes wrong, I use timeshift, so I’ll go back and see what I can do. Isn’t that a solution as well instead of me learning a hundred pacman commands?

I use both, but in effect, unless I’m using Pamac to install a single package out of convenience sake (especially something like a Flatpak), I use pacman to update via TTY. The Pamac panel icon also acts as a little more of a permanent reminder that I have updates waiting than the EOS notifier. Handy to have the option to change things like cache settings via GUI, even if you can do it from the command line.

Just as a matter of interest, can you list 100 pacman commands?

For being lazy, I’d go with yay over pamac TBH. The bother of having to type ‘pamac search code’ and then ‘pamac install code’ instead of just going ‘yay code’ and choosing one seems rather a long-winded noob friendly way of doing stuff.

Just a tiny bit of research and a few alias can also help you…

Look it up, then assign pacman -Rsc to ‘uninstall’ - not exactly rocket science, but better IMO than using pamac when pacman is the proper tool.

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If you feel comfortable with that solution, then everything is in order.

I couldn’t agree more with this advice.
After all, Linux gives the user freedom to control their systems.
To the point of breaking it.

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Now I’m paranoid something is going to go wrong with my systems. I better have a second look at pacman, thanks.

I would be careful with that -c option. It might remove much more than you intend to.

-c, --cascade
Remove all target packages, as well as all packages that depend on one or more target packages. This operation is recursive and must be used with care, since it can remove many potentially needed packages.

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That’s what I mean! One small mistake from me, one large error to my computer!

I make sure to have a reliable backup strategy and to learn some basic commands to fix things up in chroot from the live usb.

Pacman
Backup
System rescue