Interesting. Still even with Flatpak there in the list, the Repo version (see what I did there) will still be first.
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I found this most upsetting - as I previously championed pamac-gui as the best place to type in some string and see everything available for all enabled sources⌠and whilst I can still use it, I canât recommend this broken spannerâŚ
Add the fact that when it installs your software and updates your system it doesnât behave in the expected manner (i.e. System first, AUR later) and can glitch, as all the apparently random fcitx threads attest.
So the best recommendations now are for noobs to search with their browser and then install in Konsole.
Noobs also easily confuse typing - sudo pamac/pacman - Iâm not dyslecsical (though I did lay awake all night wondering if there really is a Dog) but I did it enough times to wrap up a code.
⯠sudo pamac install cheese
Warning: Do not use 'pamac' with 'root' privileges. It can cause permission issues.
Are you sure you want to continue? (y/n):
Manjaroâs direction should be clearer - implement a GUI which is ROBUST like Linux Mint, or just remove it and announce that it is terminal centric and maybe just include Octopi for GUI fanatics (I didnât see many complaints about Octopi - but that might be simply because nobody uses it).
Right now I just go with Topgrade for updates - it seems to catch everything.
Nope - as a simple GUI frontend for pacman (+optionally an aur-helper) theres just about nothing wrong with octopi, provided two things;
- You dont mind the synaptic package manager like interface
- The quality or status of the particular aur-helper, should you choose to use that component*
* According to the git source the options are pacaur, paru, pikaur, trizen, yay.
Which is not currently accurately reflected in the package optdepends @Yochanan
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Newbs tend to naturally gravitate to a package manager that presents pwetty icons; a possible downside of which being that accompanying text (such as repository/AUR/flatpak) is seemingly ignored 
.
Octopi isnât big on icons.
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âMrs. Murphyâs lawâ is a corollary of Murphyâs law, which states that âAnything that can go wrong will go wrong while Mr. Murphy is out of town.â
I prefer to install repository or AUR packages most of the time, but I occasionally use Appimages
Issue was reported to Manjaro GitHub Feb 23 2025 - #488 -Please make the upgrade process a two step process
and fixed by maintainer 1 Mar 2025 ¡ manjaro/libpamac@c629d1d ¡ GitHub
Releases ¡ manjaro/libpamac - 11.7.3 ¡ GitHub
always perform sysupgrade transaction separately from AUR
AUR package uses Debian source too:
Package Details picoscope7 7.1.39_1r3737-1 Description: PicoScope 7 Test and Measurment Stable Last Updated: 2025-01-26 10:41 (UTC) Sources (1) https://labs.picotech.com/picoscope7/debian/pool/main/p/picoscope/picoscope_7.1.39-1r3737_amd64.deb
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Thatâs right. The point is - as I already pointed out - I searched a camera app and used âcameraâ as search term. And that two âcheeseâ entries did not appear right after another. Well, since I didnât expect that a Flatpak version would be offered because I know that cheese is an app that is known to be in package repositories, I didnât read the grey text that denotes the object as Flatpak.
GUI: simply because I also wanted to judge novice user friendliness of Manjaro. Well, letâs imagine a typical Windows user whoâs willing to switch to a Linux distro. This user will hardly ever have used the CMD window that Windows offers, let alone that package repositories exists⌠
- Mrs. Murphy quote: generated a big smile
- my ârepo based appsâ: I meant packages
- Well, a few days ago I read about crashes (AUR (en) - picoscope7), so I closed the browser tabâŚ
Linux Software & Drivers for Oscilloscopes and Data Loggers
Pico officially supports Ubuntu and openSUSE Leap on the x86-64 (64-bit AMD / Intel) architecture. However, a growing community of users apply our software on a wider variety of Linux distributions. Help for doing so may be available from the community via our forums
No problem building package on my system
pamac build picoscope7 ¡ GitHub Gist
Also, sadly, not big on Flatpak or Snap for anyone that wants to include that - so it doesnât count as a âSoftware Centreâ.
Maybe I am just lucky but I have never had any major issues using Pamac.I am on the unstable branch so I am used to quite a few updates.I use the tray icon to check when there are updates and if there are several I use pamac upgrade in the terminal.I do use the gui to check for orphans and if a package has been removed from the repos I look at what is installed in aur and if it is there and i do not need it i remove it as i do with orphans.I also use it to remove the cache when it grows to a large size.While I do not have very many aur files I do have aur enabled.As far as people who come here from windows I would suggest as has been posted many times Manjaro is not a one time install it and forget it.For me it would be kind of like getting out of an auto with an automatic trans and getting into one with a manual I probably need to learn how to shift it or I am going to need a new transmission very soon.
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I think not only NewbsâŚ
I would love for Pamac to successfully filter and present to me ALL optional options for installing a package from a simple filterâŚ
Whether text vs Graphical interfaces are better is up for grabs, but to not be able to reliably update your system by clicking âupdate systemâ is a bit silly.
Obviously you didnât open up your pamac GUI and type âcheeseâ to see if it would install the flatpak for you, right?
The issue here isnât that itâs always broken, but that itâs unpredictable and can obviously not be relied upon to do a simple software search.
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I actually agree with you Rob. A properly functioning GUI Package Manager is a must. But most people here seems, to me, to make excuses for Pamac not being fully functional, by pointing people to the CLI.
This discussion has also taken place in another thread.
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Thanks, tracyanne, for this statement.
Doing real experience seems (most of the time) the only way to get a distinctive impression of a Linux OS. In the course of this discussion here I have read on further information, since my own laptop is going to be replaced by a new one.
(actually off-topic in this thread) I think that Manjaro is coped with two wishes that can hardly be united. On the one hand those - likely more the nerds type - who want to be on the edge of the development efforts (also on productive machines) and those who are not specifically interested in short update cycles. But⌠the latter find the distro update intervals too long or would like to get rid of manual re-installs every few years (or do risky distro updates in a running system).
My conclusion: a quite vast part of users would be best serviced through a sort of semi-rolling or slow rolling systems. In this regard, the Manjaro efforts are definitely very enjoyable, but for many, this would not constitute a basis for changing the work horse.
I could read these days that SUSE has planned to enroll a slow rolling model that should replace their LEAP release model. It is said that the decision is based on some user feedback.
Of course this is only meant as an example. In general I have the impression that rolling releases are slowly arriving also beyond the Arch-based ecosystem. E.g. based on debian-testing (what Iâd consider as too risky, and would hardly be practized as slow - as I understand now during my bathing in Manjaro).
I actually use the pamac GUI for almost all my updates, I have some AUR packages, and some flatpaks, and I experience no issues. My install has been rock solid stable since I installed it. My partner uses the GUI for all her updates, she has 1 AUR package MullvadVPN, herâs also seems rock solid.
My AUR packages are:
dict 0.1.0-1 AUR 2.9 MB
jjazzlab-bin 4.1.2-1 AUR 434.3 MB
mullvad-vpn-bin 2025.4-1 AUR 352.4 MB
pyside6-tools-wrappers 20230711-1 AUR 15.6 kB
thesage 0.40.3028-1 AUR 93.2 MB
It is possible my choices of AUR packages contribute to the stability, in that they have little to no affect on the underlying system.
I began my Linux Journey with Mandrake Linux back in 2000, and one thing I canât help is compare that experience with my later experiences.
I was able to take care of all the Systemâs need in a GUI application, which for someone coming from Windows was a bit of a godsend. In fact I never really learned much about the CLI until I moved from an increasingly flakey Mandriva, to Ubuntu (which was promoted by Canonical as the easiest most user friendly Linux ever, typical marketing â â â â â â â â ). Ubuntu didnât have any tools of the quality I was used to. Things did improve on the GUI tools front over time, such that when my partner insisted she need her own computer to keep up with friends we had met on the road (we lived a Gypsy lifestyle for some time), I was happy to set up an xubuntu machine for her (a simple desktop for a simple person, as she told people), and later a Linux Mint machine, and now the Manjaro KDE 2 in 1, that she uses.
By and large the pamac GUI works, but it does have itâs quirks, and there are some things that really need to be looked into. On that note Iâve been looking at the source code, to see if there is help I can give, but I have 2 problems there, Iâm not familiar with the language used, and Iâm still trying to work out the developerâs train of thought. So itâs slow going for me.
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Interesting. Mandriva followed after Mandrake. A few days ago a read a short personal Linux distro experience summary:
I was introduced to Linux in 1998 with a SUSE disc that came in the back of a computer magazine. I didnât want to Bork my system so I took my windows HD out, put a spare in and installed from that SUSE disc. It didnât work⌠but it worked just enough to give me the Linux bug. I tried several more times and finally got pclinuxos to work, but the NVIDIA driver would not install. Then came mandrake and that time the nvidia driver worked, but I had a win-modem. Ugh, the damned win-modem just wouldnât work. So I got a hardware dial up card and game on. I loved mandrake, then came kubuntu, which I used for 14 years or so. Jumped to Manjaro-kde, then went with the unstable repos which makes it pretty much Arch. Then went Arch. Back to Manjaro-kde, broke my system and now Iâm on OpenSuse Tumbleweed. How ironic that the distro that introduced me to Linux, is what Iâve currently settled on.
Found here: https://lowtechlinux.com/2023/10/01/opensuse-leap-to-be-discontinued-introducing-slowroll/
In the nineties I also had my first experience with SUSE (got a box from friends), but did very little with it. Later my son started with Ubuntu, and not long after that, I opted for Mint Mate, and on my office desktop PCâs Mint KDE, and after it was abandoned, then Neon on the one PC and MX Linux (KDE) on the other one. Neon suffers from (persistent) Plasma 6 quirks, so for my new notebook itâs no option. MX Linux the same (because Debian based). Yesterday I installed Kubuntu 24 LTS. Looks very good, and thatâs an intermediate step until I find an Arch- or Ubuntu based system that offers slow- or semi-rolling
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You might be interested in a forthcoming immutable edition of Manjaro; enjoy:
Just another experience (JAE): installing GIMP.
Since I was not sure whether Gimp is already installed or not (since it could well be present as part of the distribution), I did not open Pamac, but instead I switched to the Activities menu (using the âWindowsâ key - an ingenious move of the Gnome developers). I was also interested about the activities search response on the term gimp, since sometimes the program is not referred to by this acronym.
Result: listed as app that could be installed. In the information line it is not specified whether it would be flatpak or package repo. Since I wanted to know that, next window reported: flatpak. Hm. Flatpack precedence?
So I aborted and went to Pamac GUI. Gimp is listed in my case with one other app in the list in between. In this case, the icon for the Flatpak version is exactly the same (not the icon of a âpackedâ item). So you only see the difference if you read the grey text close to the icon.
Of course, I selected Gimp as package install. But I wonder that this natural priority is not handled from the search function of Activities. Let alone that the (two) options are shown.
Anyway: I was happy this time that gimp could be installed without doing a full update. I already saw the alert of updates available (223 packages, would download approx. 1.2 Gigs). Apparently Pamac saw no dependency conflicts without update.
So I execute the update while processing an image with Gimp. 
FYI Iâm having a lot of fun with GIMP (Beta) which is flatpak.