But the GTK 4 UI is the attraction here, especially for Arch Linux newcomers who want to get things done quickly.
That alone reads as the author of the text wrote the text they wrote just to generate something on the topic. In other words, that article was mostly useless to me, if not for a few screenshots in it.
Quickly is not the appropriate word here. If I’d like to install something, I’d do it
sudo pacman -Syu firefoxin terminal, and you cannot beat that. Even for a newcomer, especially if they are comfortable with CLI. (As a macOS refugee, I was pretty at home with Linux terminal.) Even when they are not, I personally know non-computer people I guided to open terminal and paste the command, then press enter. Nothing is quicker than that.What it potentially gives us is the GUI for people who want to do something on their own, without learning even the tiniest bits of new things, like why the fuck
Ctrl+Cdoes something weird, andCtrl+Vis not a key for pasting that word they coped with the chat with me.My take, that would be just another abandonware. Won’t be surprised the whole thing is heavily vibe coded, as much as the 9to5 article. Normally, I don’t even read or comment that. It’s that I think both Gnome and KDE Software App Stores front ends could do better, UX wise. So I was curious about this solution to the problem. Another Synaptic I’ve been trying with Ubuntu like 20 years ago, not really understanding what it does and why. I see no difference here. Not saying nobody needs it, but I don’t see much of an improvement from the first glance. And not much motivation to explore that further. If the author reflects on whys and hows somewhere, I might explore though.
for distros like CachyOS this would make sense. But then again Cachy already uses Octopi. Now if this is EASIER to use than octopi and is put at the forefront of CachyOS I can see it being of value. Its’ been a few months since I’ve used CachyOS so I don’t know if they now have their own package manager.
Now for someone who has managed to install Arch on it’s own then yeah I don’t see the benefit of having a GUI Package Manager for Arch. If you’ve installed Arch it’s safe to assume you’re already very comfortable in the terminal so why slide backwards and use a GUI? unless you’re completely dependent on the mouse…I don’t know.
All that being said I can see the benefit of it if you just want to browse for stuff. Sometimes it’s just nice to browse in a graphical interface for new and interesting things. I’m not a huge GNOME fan but I do like their GNOME Software package manager and I do use that on Debian based distros like PikaOS.
I second this, thanks for taking time formulating it. I have never used Cachy, but I assume that’s something you recommend to others as an Arch-like system. I’m not sure it’s worth it for an average Joe, I’d still recommend Fedora. I really like Gnome, I think it’s the best right now, but it needs some more polish, as not everything is newcomer friendly. Yet, those are mostly nitpicks, in general it’s good, I’d say.
I’d do it
sudo pacman -Syu firefoxin terminal, and you cannot beat that.While you’re not wrong, and while Arch isn’t a particularly forgiving distro for newbies, I’m forever hitting up against trying to guess the name of a package that I want to install via a terminal. Firefox is straightforward, but so many bits of software have names that make sense, but that you couldn’t necessarily guess.
Well, package search is a thing.
s Would you prefer an electron app instead? /s
I’m all-in for some great GUI for that, by the way. But I think having it as an actual website (so, just redesigning the link) is a great thing to have.
Why guess? Either use the aforementioned package search or use the internet search engine of your choice and type “arch $name_of_the_software”. The matching site for the arch or AUR package is always among the first results.
