So recently I came across a problem in my installation of Manjaro Gnome. One of many Arch Linux Distro’s that are out there. The problem required me to search though my knowledge book of ‘Terminal Commands’.
I know, I know, for some of us we might as well be studying rocket science. That said, I decided not alone to make it an easy reference for future self, but a source of information for you my readers. We’ll start easy, shall we?
$ sudo pacman -Syu
This command is used to update the Manjaro’s System. The results of which can be seen in the image below…
Simple, yes? So the next command is fairly similar and is as follows
$ sudo pacman -Syy
This command is used to update your available repositories and not the whole system. This can be seen in action in the screenshot below…
I know right, very similar output. But you will notice in the above screenshot we are missing the line : : Starting full system update. . . And so our confidence is rising.
So let’s say you’ve been using some form of Windows or even another Linux distro, and that killer application that you have being using couldn’t be available in Manjaro/Arch or Linux could it? I’m here to show you how to find out.
$ sudo pacman -Ss ( package name )
This command ( minus the parenthesis ) inserting the application of choice will search the Manjaro Repositories for said killer application. And there’s a lot of those ( killer applications ). We’ll use as our example the excellent system information application Neofetch in our screenshot below…
As you will notice in the above screenshot our example Neofetch is available which also comes with a brief explanation of what the app is.
So now we’ve found our killer app, how do we get it on to our PC. Not so long ago this would have being a cumbersome task even for a seasoned Linux user. Today it’s another simple command in the terminal using Pacman and our test application Neofetch, we type the following in the terminal…
$ sudo pacman -S ( package name )
Don’t be afraid of the rather large dialogue displayed, what we have here is Pacman telling us that it has installed all dependencies required by our application to run, and it also lists any optional dependencies for our application to add to the functions of Neofetch.
Now that we’ve learnt how to ‘search’, and ‘install’ our applications. What happens when we no longer require the services of our killer app, and we need to remove it.
There are two commands which are available to us to complete this process. The first…
$ sudo pacman -R ( package name )
This will remove said package from our system. The second…
$ sudo pacman -Rs ( package name )
Will remove said package and all it’s dependencies too. So nothing of our application remains on our system, as seen in our screenshot below…
Exciting, yes/no? OK, from time to time it’s a good habit to update the mirrors from which the repositories serve us our applications. I could write an entire article on this particular command, but in it’s simplest form…
$ sudo pacman-mirrors –fasttrack
Please note, there are two hyphens — before the word fasttrack. This command will search for the fastest server for you and update your pacman mirrors in the process…
Another interesting command in the arsenal of “pacman-mirrors” commands is the command for finding the closest mirrors to where you live in the world, or continent.
$ sudo pacman-mirrors – -continent
And again with two hyphens — before the word continent. There is an excellent article on the use and execution of the pacman-mirror command which can be found at The Manjaro Wiki , and if you want to know more about pacman. There is an excellent cheatsheet at the Devhints website. I hope this journey into pacman & pacman-mirrors and the Terminal Terminology has being as educational and inspiring for you to read, as it has been for me to write about. There are a whole host of commands and command options that I have not explored here. But as an incentive, the Pacman Overview on the Manjaro Wiki makes for an excellent read. Until next time .. .. ..
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