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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.

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Do not update single packages on Archlinux, but (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 days ago by thingsiplay@beehaw.org to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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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

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[–] ulterno@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

No, pacman -S firefox will not update your firefox.

pacman -Sy firefox will update your firefox and nothing else.

If you have done pacman -Sy once, then your list of packages and their versions gets updated.
From then on, using pacman -S <package> on any package, whether or not it was already installed, will now get the new version of it.

On the other hand, if you have not updated for long, then if you run pacman -Su to update, it will update nothing, because it looks at the old package list and compares it to installed packages and all of them match.
If you were to use pacman -Sy and then pacman -Su, then it would do the update, similar to pacman -Syu.
If you did pacman -Sy yesterday and then do pacman -Su today, then it will update up to yesterday's packages and will ignore any updates from that point to today.

This can be considered analogous to apt update and apt upgrade.
If you run apt upgrade without apt update, you only upgrade upto the packages that you got until the last apt update.

If arch used apt, then in this case, the recommendation would be for never use apt update without using apt upgrade right after it.

[–] N0x0n@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Isn't pacman -Syu the recommended way to update anyway? I have always used that o. EndeavourOS and hadn't any issues.

Except for the recent nouveau nvidia driver :/

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

Yes, but it is also good to know why it is recommended.