While it’s understood about “updating more often” the question remains: why it often does behave that way: freezing the desktop?
While it’s understood about “habit of updating” the question remains: why it often does behave that way: freezing the desktop?
Interestingly, I have experienced similar annoyances; which were likely only coincidental. I don’t see how it might be connected to the Pamac notification, though. My guess is the accumulated debt of not having updated in a timely fashion must surely have contributed, however.
If you don’t sync your system and do not add new packages and thus - technically speaking - your system is not changed then your system should not freeze.
I will suggest to
- disable pamac update check
- remove the tray icon
Then validate if this stabilize your system.
To check for updates without pamac running in the background you can use
checkupdates
For custom scripts pulled from AUR search the forum for check-aur.sh
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… and (only if potentially relevent); to isolate Pamac from AUR updates:
pamac update --no-aur
Exactly, that’s quite reasonable.
After that, can you suggest an alternative notificators instead of manual check?
By the way, regarding the correlation between awaiting accumulated update packages and freezing: sometimes Firefox gets freezing unrecoverably when it’s in the update list of accumulated awaiting packages, thus, it signals about necessity of update and formally acts as “anticipation/prevention” factor/indicator of the potential whole system freeze.
I use matray from the extra repository for that:
$ pamac search matray
matray 1.1.4-1 [Installed] extra
A Manjaro Linux announcements notification app
So it can be installed using:
pamac install matray
An addon/ extension/ plugin/ plasmoid/ widget (use your favourite terminology) was often the cause of graphics (related) crashes I’ve experienced in the past; seemingly triggered by network activity.
Systematically removing these and waiting, or checking applicable logs (which I’m guilty of not doing) can often help diagnose.
I’m not a programmer; I’m unable to explain explain the “why” in succinct fashion; only offer my observations, but perhaps it may be related.
This is installed by default, at least, it was on my system. It displays only Manjaro system related updates, which in itself can be a handy feature.
For example the last notification via Matray linked to: [Stable Update] 2023-10-04 - Kernels, Systemd, LibreOffice, NVIDIA, Mesa, GNOME, AMDVLK.
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I am fairly certain that whatever the number of changes as such - between your system and the most recent metadata has nothing to do with the freezes.
But as your observations are indicating some correlation - then there is so much more reason to disable pamac update check - to verify if this is indeed Pamac causing the system to hang.
It is fairly easy to create a systemd user service which runs checkupdates and display the number of lines
checkupdates | SYNC=$(wc -l) | if [[ -n "${SYNC}" ]]; then notify-send -u normal "${SYNC} package(s) to sync"; fi
You can create something similar to [root tip] [HowTo] Check if your AUR build scripts have been updated
I think it depends on if the ISO used was released before or after matray. I know I didn’t have it by default and had to install it separately.
I recall there was a brief period where its continued existence was in question; the specifics evade me, but from memory, the maintainer was considering discontinuing.
Here it is:
$ sudo pacman -Rns pamac-tray-icon-plasma
error: target not found: pamac-tray-icon-plasma
I guess it’s Octopi notifications pop up:
Not really. I can’t remember who it was, but they were still willing to maintain it. He just couldn’t afford the hosting anymore…
I any case - octopi or pamac - test by disabling the update checker for the relevant app
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That’s a fair concern. 
I only offered an opinion because OP asked:
So, IMHO it actually became and now is relevant.
Shh, I think we just became noise.
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as pamac is more under suspection I’ve disabled check for updates option in both general and AUR sections in pamac-manager.
Ok, I’ve just got the same issue having pamac and aur “check for update” option been turned off.
Yesterday, there was an update (all packages), but without reboot, just suspend/resume events.