It does become quicker. I’m not a touch typer (is that even a word?), and I never thought it would, but it does. And it helps do it, if you actually do it. That is, after all, how you improve something. Practise.
And it looks good, so please provide the output of:
pamac checkupdates
~ pamac checkupdates
5 available updates:
firefox 123.0.1-1 -> 124.0-1 extra
firefox-i18n-en-us 123.0.1-1 -> 124.0-1 extra
bun-bin 1.0.31-1 -> 1.0.33-1 AUR
google-chrome 122.0.6261.128-1 -> 123.0.6312.58-1 AUR
mongodb-bin 7.0.6-1 -> 7.0.7-1 AUR
Out of Date:
electron28-bin 28.2.4-1 AUR
Try good, old, deep cleanup:
sudo rm -Rf /var/tmp/pamac/dbs/sync
sudo mkdir -p /var/tmp/pamac/dbs/sync
sudo pamac update -a --force-refresh
Also, it shouldn’t hurt to refresh keys:
sudo pacman -S archlinux-keyring manjaro-keyring
sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux manjaro
sudo pacman-key --refresh
sudo pacman -Syyu
This went through, at the end I did not do the update of packages prompted. Then I went to the gui, and tried to do update. I got the same error.
sudo pacman -S archlinux-keyring manjaro-keyring
sudo pacman-key --populate archlinux manjaro
These all went through.
sudo pacman-key --refresh
this is taking quite long time, still going. But I see lots of errors like:
gpg: error retrieving 'zbyszek@in.waw.pl' via WKD: No data
gpg: error reading key: No data
gpg: error retrieving 'lennart@poettering.net' via WKD: General error
gpg: error reading key: General error
gpg: error retrieving 'lennart@poettering.de' via WKD: General error
gpg: error reading key: General error
gpg: error retrieving 'lpoetter@redhat.com' via WKD: No data
gpg: error reading key: No data
gpg: error retrieving 'poettering@users.sourceforge.net' via WKD: No data
gpg: error reading key: No data
...
what do those mean?
These all went through, and when I try to update on the gui, still the same error.
There are a lot of these:
…so I’d say work through this:
As far as I am aware youtube-dl has been removed from the official repositories, and replaced by yt-dlp; which is a fork of youtube-dl.
sudo pacman -s yt-dlp
If gPodder still fails with yt-dlp installed, you may need to wait for the gPodder maintainer to play catch up. Cheers.
Please also note that the Community repo hasn’t existed in quite some time. That you still have it listed indicates that you have not paid any attention to the Stable Announcements whenever manual intervention has been required.
I suggest you read and understand what a .pacnew file is: begin with the System Maintenance Wiki page, under the heading of Pacnew and Pacsave files, and follow that up with anything else you can find on the topic.
Cheers.
You need to update the manjaro-mirrors and then again delete-restore database. If the pacman conf needs to be updated, as @soundofthunder says, then do it as a first action, then the rest.
how to do these please?
Unfortunately, that’s not very helpful.
sudo DIFFPROG=diff pacdiff|result=
[sudo] password for djia:
sudo: pacdiff: command not found
➜ ~ sudo pamac install pacdiff
Error: target not found: pacdiff
Install Meld. Then open current conf in pacnew aside in Meld. It will show you differences and easy ways to integrate them. Of course, you may not want to change your custom changes, so this has to be a considerate choice.
The problem here is that you need to open Meld as root, so you could save the changes conviniently. I am doing it with some old app pacnew-chaser that does that. I guess you have to figure out how to do it without it.
EDIT:
Ah, sorry, forgot you can’t install anything at the moment 
Then you need to open configs side by side and compare it manually I’m afraid.
I can install from command line without any problem, it appears. My problem is just with the gui pamac.
Seriously?
Hey, here’s a thought: Maybe you first need to install pacdiff before you can use it. In any case, as mentioned, you need to do some research.
Good luck.
I installed pacman-contrib that contains pacdiff. Then I did:
~ sudo DIFFPROG=diff pacdiff|result=
➜ ~
So it simply has not result.
As mentioned above, installing meld may be preferable:
# sudo pacman -S pacman-contrib
sudo pacman -S meld
sudo DIFFPROG=meld pacdiff|result=
Use this command to list any .pacnew files on your system:
pacdiff -o
Then read through the Stable Announcements released in recent months to find references to any .pacnew files listed. Yes, this might be time-consuming, but most of the manual modifications are very important.
pacdiff --help
Cheers.
… because that command you used doesn’t make sense …
As for the community repo not being active for months now and the need to remove it:
open /etc/pacman.conf in any editor of your choice
and comment out or remove the two lines referring to that no longer existing (community) repository
… almost at the bottom of the file …
~ sudo DIFFPROG=meld pacdiff|result=
this has no result
➜ ~ pacdiff -o
/etc/passwd.pacnew
/etc/shells.pacnew
/etc/locale.gen.pacnew
/etc/pacman.conf.pacnew
/etc/pam.d/sddm.pacnew
/etc/tlp.conf.pacnew
ignore /etc/passwd - or be very, very careful!
/etc/shells is also not that important
same for /etc/locale.gen
/etc/pacman.conf I just described above
don’t know about the two others - /etc/tlp.conf ist just because you made some changes that are now different from the defaults
you can check, but likely just ignore
It is about tracking and incorporating important changes to these sometimes critical configuration files.
If you installed meld:
sudo DIFFPROG=meld pacdiff
…or just:
pacdiff
to run the program.
shows only diff on passwd.pacnew