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  • Hey everyone, I would love some guidance here.

    I'm new to Linux, I'm using Arch Linux and pacman currently. Would it be better to get more acquainted with flatpacks? If I wanted to swap to flatpacks would I just start using it? Would I need to transfer currently installed applications from pacman to flatpack?

    Would it be wiser to move to Nix? I love the concept of atomic updates, that's the main functionality I'm interested in getting - I like my system cutting edge but stable. But I'm fully uneducated on how applications get used by the common man. Like in Windows if I find a small application like Hex Kit I find its .exe and install it. In Linux I download their version online and I get .bin's and .pak's and .so and .dat and I have no idea how to get the bastard working. Same with like a Godot export to Linux, I get a .so or a .pck.

    Any advise or educational sources are much appreciated. I'm learning as fast as I can but I'm drinking from a firehouse right now lol. I'm also building a doc to help my friends jump over so if I'd be better served using something other than pacman I want to know so I can update the doc before handing it to them.

    • Arch gets a bad rep, but I think it's a great first distro for anyone with moderate or above skills. The primary factor is that you have to actually be interested in learning it, not looking for something that "just works".

      I use Arch on my beefy gaming PC and I run updates every day because I'm a dork. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I've had better stability doing this than with the monthly patches on Windows. That's not to say there haven't been issues, Windows sets a low bar. But here in this year 2025, the "innovation" of paid software is excessive and often not worth the cost of dealing with service subscriptions and whatnot. The software in FOSS land tends to be more conservative in its construction with a focus on doing the thing it's supposed to and usability. People want their distros to work, it's not like Arch maintainers are just breaking it all over the place because, "oopsy, gotta stay up to date!"

      Anyways, here's how I prioritize things:

      1. pacman: This should be your PRIMARY source. Think of everything in the official Arch repos as part of the OS, just things you haven't installed on your system yet because you don't need it. The most care has been put into ensuring all these packages work together and I have the highest confidence that these will be maintained for the greatest duration into the future. One of the big benefits of using pacman is that especially with Arch, you upgrade your entire system at once with pacman -Syu. Conversely on Windows, you have to update all software yourself by either downloading a newer version and running the installer, having the program install a system tray icon to pester you, MAYBE the program implements a self/auto update? Or maybe it prompts you for an update and then just sends you to the website to download the latest version and install it yourself. Kind of a mess, really.
      2. yay: If I want a piece of software that's not part of the main distribution, I'll turn to the Arch User Repository (AUR). If it helps, just think of this as the unofficial pacman. It downloads the files from the AUR and builds them directly on your system (all using scripts, using yay is as easy as using pacman). The downside is that because the AUR is unofficial, occasionally things can break when something in the official repository updates. It happens from time to time, but you can always check the AUR pages and see that people are on top of things for popular programs. It's fine to place your trust in the AUR (IMHO) but if you have an absolutely critical app that cannot afford to break, maybe consider a flatpak or appimage instead.
      3. flatpaks: again, this is another package manager that behaves much like pacman and yay do. The difference here is that flatpaks are contained. This makes a big difference especially with Arch since the whole system updates at once with Syu. The biggest downside (IMHO) is space, a package that might only take ~15MB from the official repo may instead be >300MB when packaged with all its dependencies in a flatpak. I think this is what the Discover Software Center actually hooks into but I'm not sure since I do all command line. You could, if you wanted, begin uninstalling applications you installed through pacman (obviously not system related ones) and install the flatpaks in their place. For reasons I still don't understand myself, the OBS that you install through pacman doesn't have browser sources available, but the one I installed from https://flathub.org/ does. I need the browser sources so I've made that decision, I'll switch back to the official repo one if they ever get that sorted.
      4. AppImages: AppImages are entirely self-contained. Download a .AppImage and you can place it almost anywhere on your system and it'll run, no requirement for further dependencies. It doesn't install, however it will still create files on the system required for its operation such as anything needed under ~/.config or wherever. To update these, you just need to download the newer file.

      I hope that helps a little bit, let me know if you'd like further clarification on any of the points.

      It seems like a lot when you're first learning, but I keep all my notes in Obsidian and once you understand how you're building the stack of software on your Arch installation I think it'll click for you. To fully update my system I run:

      • pacman -Syu
      • yay -Sua
      • flatpak update

      You can update pacman packages with yay, and you can update flatpaks with Discover (I think) but I do it this way just because I'm meticulous and I like keeping my eye on things. Still, pretty easy I think?

    • I am not sure if Arch or Nix are good distros if you are new to Linux.

      I would say Linux Mint might be a better option to get your bearings. This is a subjective thing, but I personally found it helpful to slowly learn some core things about Linux (CLI, base system architecture, DE's and their nuances) in a controlled environment.

      Just sharing my thoughts. It's cool if Arch or Nix works better for you.

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