I would like to see a better software manage like Mint has.
It is colorful, easy to navigate and gives hints instead of blind searches.
Any chance KDE plasma may consider this, or maybe someone wrote a compatible equivalent package?
If you took the best of Mint and Manjaro and put them together in one distro, it would be the best of all Linux distros.
The Mint start menu is better as well.
Youâre confusing KDE Plasma, which is a desktop environment, with a package manager.
KDE Plasma is primarily designed with Discover in mind - and itâs one of the aspects of Plasma which I really donât like at all.
Mintinstall is a Debian software manager, and is not related either to KDE or Arch.
However, for Arch and Arch-based systems, it sucks even more - so youâd be looking at Octopi, and pamac-manager.
Pamac-manager is the most comprehensive.
Also, youâre confusing âThe Mint start menuâ - because âMintâ has no start menu. Mint installs KDE Plasma, and Manjaro also uses KDE Plasma, so you need to be more accurate or specific as to what youâre observing up there.
I think the primary focus of manjaro developers will be to fix bugs of the inhouse pamac-manager. Alternatively, there is Octopi. KDE Discover is officially NOT recommended because it uses packagekit that has security issues.
Mintinstall looks at least on screenshots as the ubuntu-gnome software center. Nothing ground breaking besides the slightly bigger icons.
So no, nobody here will create yet another package manager from scratch. There is also no need to.
I find Pamac-manager to be the best of all software centers! I just wish the devs keep it up to date!
Not confusing⌠Just pamac runs under Manjaro.
I was using it as example only. You can tell it was written by developers, for developers, not those transitioning from Windows and wanting more GUI friendly UIs.
I was hoping some âkidâ would take it as a challenge to write something little more flashy and user GUI friendly. Minstall is sexy compared to pamac. I would rather use Manjaro OS with Mint frontend.
I hate that the search Icon is in the top left corner, but the search text bar is in the middle instead of beside it. What is this, Windows 11? It is not a preference setting. No classic shell to fix it. (maybe just leave the text-search bar permanent, just in case someone wants to use it.)
Also, I consider it a bug, that you cannot paste with mouse and requires termination (Return key) whereas the start menu (Application Launcher) uses logic as you type.
I have 30 years as a developer, 25 years as a Software Engineer, and the last 10 in QA.
So, I have an overall view that sometimes gets lost or owned at the individual department level. Those that develop want a tool that is functional, An engineer wants a tool that works, and the end user wants something that doesnât require an encyclopedia to interpret the interface. Basically cPanel on steroids.
Arch is a community driven user-centric distribution. Manjaro takes this as technical base and nudges it a bit into the user-friendly (less of do everything yourself, more of convenience) direction. User-friendly is often confused with beginner-friendly, and beginner-friendly in turn is often confused with toys. Linux Mint tries to be beginner-friendly and doing so is a lot of work (and it doesnât make such a distribution in any way inferior as of Arch would be the real thing for the pros). Now, i donât know if there is/was any vision of turning Manjaro into a beginner-friendly distro - but even if so you would need the folks to do the work - continuously that is, and iâm afraid no some âkidâ wonât do.
This is because we donât want everything visible all the timeâŚ
Thereâs actually no need to âclickâ the search icon anyway, you can just open up the app and start typing - and the invisible search then appears in place of the tabs.
I thought it looked very slick, and I came from Linux Mint.
I never actually noticed what you mentioned - that you could, for example, copy the word âplexâ and then hit Menu and paste⌠I never actually did this and canât really think of a scenario when Iâd need to do that (but then, only 8 years or so using KDE Plasma, I guess thereâs still a lot to learn).
So next up, the idea of copying text âplexâ and then opening a GUI to search it is now slightly alienâŚ
My terminal handles such things:
⯠plex
.đ I cannot find 'plex'
đĄ Search using Pamac, Yay, or Flatpak? [P/Y/F/A for All, Enter to skip]
I must confess I wrote that handler for fun - and I never even use it. There are often installation sources available which you wonât find in a package manager, so I always use Firefox for that task.
So again, Iâd just type âaddâ to get the GUI, and type âplexâ because pasting just never entered my head.
Not sure if anyone else noticed this - but sure, it could be mentioned - did you file a bug report that Ctrl_V doesnât paste text to the search box?
I donât remember the mouse right-click ever being anything more than a context click exept in certain applications.
Right click brings a context menu where you might select an option to paste, but middle-click directly pastes selected text.
You could try this now, select the text here: plex then open pamac (type âaddâ in the menu) and when it comes up, click the magnifying glass, then middle-click the search field.
Do you assume that searching an indexed list of text in the menu is a similar function to searching a complete list of software online?
There is a very good reason that Pamac does not hammer the AUR with a fresh search every time you type a single character. It is also unreasonable to expect it to synchronise a full list of available applications, which would require redundant updates in the background every few seconds⌠it is simply a completely different function.
Linux Mint uses stable repositories which donât change.
Go figure.
Thanks to your tip, the mouse right-click-paste functions if your press the space bar first. The Shift-insert does not work, but that could be a Manjaro in general thing, or keyboard misalignment since my keypad delete key does not work either.
A ferrari is a sleek driving maching with beauty to match, but I doubt anyone would confuse it for some kid trying to pass his driverâs exam as a beginner.
Allowing to write a Manjaro Hello file with tabs for software would be a consideration.
I am sure there are docs for some of that. Iâm not sure if the Hello file allows search or complex command parameters, but that might work.
Actually Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V work just fine, just no (right-mouse) alternate menu text for paste fiunction. Similar issue in HTML5 where you have to programatically add it to the menu.
OK, the more that Linux becomes end-User Friendly and leaves more of the terminal commands for the developer, the more adoption it will gain to the general public, unless you just want a private playground with a Keep Out sign to Trespassers. This has been the general mindset in the developer community since day one, not just a Linux issue. The developer doesnât mind memorizing a cheat sheet of script codes. The end user wants Tool Tips. Different perspectives.
This is where QA comes in, and pisses off both the developers and the end users⌠Telling one to put more buttons, and telling the other why buttons are in the way.
Also remember, PCâs were once considered toys. They were a lot more user friendly than mainframes and mini computers. Not to be taken serious in the 70âs and 80âs.
I believe the advancement in TV/Video changed how we appproach it.
I started with paper tape, landing a man on the moon with teletype output in 4K (memory, not video)
You might want to try pamac-gtk3 instead of pamac-gtk (which is gtk 4 based). I like the old design better too, the new one is heavily impacted from the design of the framework gtk4 and adwaita, which are gnome things i do not fancy (everything cramped at the titlebar which is no titlebar anymore).
@Ben
I made the screen wider (2-columns) so it is a little better now.
It just requires an extra action, like the space bar to use alternate menu (right-mouse)
It is already installed⌠I guess I am already using the deluxe version. 
Mod edit: Consecutive posts merged.
I came across Shelly. Donât know anything about it but it looks nice. 
Thereâs always octopi. Itâs in the repositories, and itâs qt-based, like Plasma. 
The what menu?
When did Linux Mint get a Start Menu. Did Clement Lefebvre sell out to Microsoft?
@PackCat There are a lot of things and names, that Microsoft does, or uses, that either do not exist in Linux/Unix, or have a completely different name, and have done so since the creation of Unix, well before Bill Gates and Co began mangling names for Commercial purposes.
Start Menu, is one such thing. It simply does not exist in Linux based Operating Systems, even though there might be something in the same place as Microsoftâs Start Menu.
Octopi is really quite good. It offers a graphical method or a Terminal method. I set it up for my partner to use the Graphical method, she transitioned to it from pamac-manager without any issues.
The Terminal method provides a lot of information, in real time, as the Install/Update proceeds.
To be fair, pamac-manager can do the same, provide real time feed back on the Install/Update, but the option to see this is not obvious.
Itâs being heavily discussed in CachyOS - but as yet, it doesnât yet look very nice or work in a very user-friendly way.
If you are testing it, you should turn off AUR and Flatpak to see how responsive it should be - but sure, you need to hit the spacebar to call up the search field.
It follows the trend to hide âall that stuffâ unless you hit the details pane - whilst Octopi gives you the option to do the whole thing in a terminal.
Also missing from Pamac is the ability to somewhat match the terminal output by setting your own theme/font/size.
However, you canât plug in Flatpaks - which is annoying.
Also annoying in Octopi is the search field with the fairly standard âCtrl_Lâ shortcut which just doesnât work for me, just me? or maybe thatâs only after selecting the terminal pane.
Yes, that is why I wrote my flatpak-tray-icon.
CtrlL is a standard terminal builtin for clearing the screen. 
