The same Gnome Software supports the native repositories in Ubuntu or Fedora. I don’t know the details, but I guess the repositories of Ubuntu and Fedora are very different. If Gnome Software can support both of them, why can’t it support Arch repositories?
I installed Arch, and Gnome Software was installed by default, but it could only install software from Flatpak, and of course, Gnome Software does not come with Endeavour or Manjaro. Isn’t it kind of bad experience that other distribution’s Gnome users can use Gnome Software to manage software but Arch-based users can’t?
GUI package managers are not supported on EndeavourOS. It is called a terminal-centric distro for a reason.
If a GUI package manager is crucially important to you (and I bet it isn’t), the best advice I can give you is to use another distro. The closest you can get to an Arch-based distro with a GUI package manager is Manjaro, but it has its own problems (mainly because Pamac sucks). You can somewhat make it work on EndeavourOS on your own, but it’s not elegant and it will sooner or later cause you grief. That’s why it isn’t supported.
No, it is not bad experience, it’s just different from your expectations.
For me, the lack of GUI package management is not a problem at all. It’s actually a completely positive experience to me, because otherwise I would have to spend more effort to debloat my EndeavourOS install and this way, the effort required to do so is very minimal. So I am very happy with how things are now – it comes down to choosing the best distro for you and making some compromises if you can’t find the perfect one.
Pacman is not made to be used in GUI applications.
But waht you can do is using the EndeavourOS base install for Gnome and add Gnome-Sofdtware using flatpak support to install needed apps on top keeping system updated with integrated notifier from EndeavourOS… and your personal apps with Gnome Software.
Well, if you ask if something is crucially important, then the vast most of things you enjoy are not, even your house, car, dog, etc.
Terminal apps like pacman/yay are sometimes better than GUI, for example, for a quick system upgrade. But not for other cases like when you are trying to search for an app for a purpose. You don’t know what it is yet, so you have to read the descriptions, see the screenshots, and examine their dependencies (to avoid a case like installing a 1MB utility requires 200MB desktop environment packages). I mean, I can technically use yay -Ss, but the terminal listing is not as easy to read and parse as the GUI search result.
Terminal-only, GUI-only, I think they are both extreme-ends. They should both be available for various cases and needs.
Anyway, I guess I have to keep using pamac (and yay for terminal) for now.
I simply use the internet for that. In most cases prepended with the search terms “Arch Linux + other search terms”, or if the search really seems to be needed more broadly (beyond pacman and AUR), then without the prepends. There are still enough other distros, that can contribute to an Arch based installation with RPM, or flatpak.
Also, pacseek-bin from the AUR comes in very handy for searching any Arch based packages including AUR.
So it is possible to use this method if I would want to search software using gnome software. Does it only display arch repo or AUR too? Does it also include software descriptions like in other distros?
My honest advise for finding packages is a. bookmark Arch packages and AUR packages or b. use something like pacfinder if you want something installed.
