I've been using Cachy OS and I'm still getting the hang of things with Arch and Pacman. I heard somewhere that it's important to clear the Pacman cache from time to time, but I'm not really sure how that works. Is clearing the cache similar to cleaning up orphaned packages on Debian or Ubuntu?
I've noticed that when I try to install something using paru, I sometimes get errors, especially since I know the AUR has been facing some DDoS attacks lately. However, when I update everything with paru, it often downloads around 1000 MB of packages and I get a message saying "Reboot recommended!" After that, I can go ahead and install the package I wanted. So, it seems like my system packages are out-of-date compared to the AUR and my distro's repositories, but once I update with paru (like doing paru -Syu), everything syncs up again. Is that how Arch is supposed to work? Am I right to expect to download large updates every few days?
1 Answer
To clear your Pacman cache, you can use the command `pacman -Scc`. This will remove the cached package files that are downloaded every time you update. The cache can be useful if you ever need to roll back to a previous version of a package without an internet connection, but over time it can take up a lot of disk space. So, clearing it out is a good idea from time to time! Just remember, keeping a few backups can be helpful.
So, needing to constantly run `pacman -Syu` to keep everything updated is just part of the Arch experience?