this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
23 points (87.1% liked)

Linux

58675 readers
543 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 

On Archlinux it is not recommended to update only one package with the package manager pacman. Let's say I have 11 packages, and one of them is extra/firefox (true story). Updating only a pacman -S firefox could introduce problems, but installing a new single package if it wasn't there is okay.

So my question is, could we get around this by removing and installing the same package again in one go: pacman -Rs firefox && pacman -S firefox

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] deadcade@lemmy.deadca.de 6 points 1 day ago

It is only a partial upgrade if you update your databases, without upgrading the rest of your system. If you try to pacman -S firefox, and it gives you a 404, you have to both update your pacman databases, and upgrade your packages. This will only give you a 404 if you cleaned your package cache, and your package is out of date. Usually, -S on an already installed package will reinstall it from cache. This does not cause a partial upgrade.

If you run pacman -Sy, everything you install is now considered a partial upgrade, and will break if you don't know exactly what you're doing. In order to avoid a partial upgrade, you should never update databases (-Sy) without upgrading packages (-Su). This is usually combined in pacman -Syu.