Check and manage pacnew files

Manjaro Development QA
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64

In my humble opinion, that line on the main Manjaro website should be removed, because…

  1. It’s just another marketing slogan aimed at drawing in more users; and…
  2. It’s just not true.

Manjaro is a great distribution, and because of its graphical installer and its inclusion of a couple of graphical administration tools, it is more user-friendly than Arch proper. But that’s where it ends. It doesn’t have a full GUI administration suite, and due to its Arch base, it is still a very technical distribution.

Absolute beginners should not be using Manjaro if all they want to do is experiment with GNU/Linux, or if they’re looking for a consumerist kitchen sink appliance or a gaming console like Microsoft Windows. Whoever put that line on our front door made a huge mistake.

If on the other hand they are interested in GNU/Linux as an operating system and they’re willing to invest the time and the energy not only to learn, but to also keep their system in good health, then yes, Manjaro would be a good choice.

I’ve been using GNU/Linux exclusively for over 24 years now, and I’ve always been on the lookout for the perfect distro to meet my needs. I’ve even dabbled with Gentoo for both the dom0 and domU on top of the Xen hypervisor. But when I discovered Manjaro, I saw my needs met.

But, I have always had a special interest in operating systems, I have some proprietary UNIX experience, and like I said, I’ve been exclusively running GNU/Linux for over 24 years now. So I’m an enthusiast rather than a consumer, and I’ve never been afraid of reading the documentation — it is there for a purpose. And even I still have to ask about some Arch- or Manjaro-specific things on occasion.

Quantity over quality never works, and I think it was a grave mistake to continue profiling Manjaro as a distribution for absolute beginners and/or for hardcore gamers.

Most of those games are proprietary software anyway — and therefore, you don’t know what they do — and are geared toward use in combination with high-end graphics adapters, which is a market segment dominated by Nvidia, whose gaming- and performance-oriented drivers are equally proprietary.

The only operating system suitable for that kind of usage — courtesy of it also being proprietary and receiving first-class vendor support from Nvidia itself — is Microsoft Windows. Therefore, gamers should stick to Windows. After all, with its BSODs, it is in and of itself a game too… of Russian roulette. :roll_eyes:

It’s not that we’re trying to be elitist — we’re not Arch proper — but things are what they are, and people are what they are. And the more you cater to idiots, the more idiots you’ll attract. That’s a given.

If you leave your door open to everyone, then one day you’re going to come home and find that your furniture has all gone missing. A line needs to be drawn somewhere.

:man_shrugging:

5 Likes
65

I think this has been talked multiple times that this line should not be formulated this way, because as you said, it is not true.

What is true is that it is user friendly for an Arch based distro, no debate about that, but the “new to computers” part isn’t. I think this is off topic so maybe we can move post or whatever.

2 Likes
66

Thats actually not 100% true, because it was edited after time after anyone told Philm that there was the missing community repo info was only visible in Tested Branch and why its its no longer showed up for everyone else in the stable branch.

So @nikgnomic has a valid point here, i think.

I think that Windows isnt user friendly also, related to all problems and hickups that i have and had in the past 30years… I remember all the registry hacks for Windows and to solve problems.

Manjaro was my first Linux distro (besides Caldera in the 90th’s that i had installed and used for not even 10hours) and even it was a long learning curve, after 4-6 Month later i learned alot and could use it as daily driver… was it harder to learn it as Win3.11 or Win95? I personally think the difference wasnt this far off.

I read yesterday in another PC Forum a help topic about TPM related issue with Win11 and how to pause it for bitlocker drives (thats activate per default in most OEM PC’s), because all your files will getting lost if you dont have a restore key… or make a mistake and have only 3 try’s befor all your files getting destroyed.

This doesnt sounds beginner friendly and not even user friendly for experienced users also.

If i compare this issue, i think that Manjaro is today even more user friendly as Microsoft Windows. And most Windows people only defend it because they are to lazy to learn something new, even if they have do it again and again with a new Windows version… but this is blended out from this people.

3 Likes
67

My opinion exactly, the last couple of replys.

is of course not true. If you want to lie less you can write “new to linux” although it is also veeery debatable.

Maybe somebody can move the offtopic.

1 Like
68

To get back on topic, maybe the Team could push the updates to all branches, because currently there is 0.1 on Stable, 0.2 on Testing, and 0.3 on Unstable. I don’t see a reason to not push the updates to all branches, as the purpose currently is to test and give feedback, I’m not going to Unstable to test one program.

69

I agree. I’ll leave it up to @Ste74 to decide if he wants to push 0.3.1-1 to all branches.

70

Well, my cmd is wrong there since no file is produced. Anyone see what is wrong there?

71

Quotes?

72

Maybe use double quotes around the bash command?

Exec = /usr/bin/bash -c "test '/usr/bin/pacdiff -o' && touch /etc/pacnew-check.file"

I guess if you use simple quotes around everything, it considers 'test ' and ' && touch /etc/pacnew-check.file' as the two quoted parts.

74

Change

Exec = /usr/bin/bash -c 'test '/usr/bin/pacdiff -o' && touch /etc/pacnew-check.file'

to

Exec = /usr/bin/bash -c '[ -f /usr/bin/pacdiff ] && touch /etc/pacnew-check.file'

It requires root permission when creating a file in /etc/

1 Like
75

@Ste74 version 0.3.1-1 it would be great to allow selection of just a single .pacnew entry and process it alone instead of having to go through all entries from beginning. Possible?

76

There is a file “/boot/grub.cfg.pacnew”
containing:

#
# AN EMPTY FILE NEEDED BY PACMAN
#

manjaro-pacnew-checker finds this but pacman needs it?
Maybe another name than “grub.conf.pacnew”??
Or “ignore” as an option in mpf?
EDIT:
just leftover trying unstable grub. deleted meantime.

77

At least on the stable branch there is no such file :person_shrugging:

78

V 0.3.2 is now in all branches. Added a little surprise wich run only one time.

1 Like
79

You have 2 option in mpc for your user case: do nothing or remove the pacnew.

80

Seems like it is broken:

(4/5) Pacnew/Pacsave created
error: command failed to execute correctly

//EDIT: This is when I have no .pacnew in the system. I created a .pacnew and the error goes away when installing a package.

An improvement I would do on translation:

"Keep original and remove Pacnew or Pacsave "

because currently it says “keep and remove…” which seems contradictory :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
81

Yep i can improve the msg :sweat_smile: . For the error let see if come back, i can t reproduce…

I forgot ti Say: to check if It Is Active run in a terminal
systemctl status --user pacnew-checker.path

1 Like
82

I see. Permanent ignoring is not possible…
Next: if there is no *.pacnew or *.pacsave ==> empty option instad simply “nothing to do”.

83

It is enabled, rebooted twice:

systemctl status --user pacnew-checker.path
* pacnew-checker.path - "Monitor the *.pacnew/*.pacsave files creations"
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pacnew-checker.path; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (waiting) since Tue 2023-09-05 00:09:47 CEST; 12h ago
   Triggers: * pacnew-checker.service

I’m on Testing branch if that makes any difference.

Also another message improvement, for the hook, it currently says (4/6) Pacnew/Pacsave created but it probably should say (4/6) Looking for Pacnew/Pacsave created

Also if I chose View & Merge, and then click OK it doesn’t delete the .pacnew nor the ‘spy file’ /etc/pacnew-check.file

1 Like
84

Thank you for feedback… tonight check It… i also want improve a Little the GUI…