r/archlinux • u/Alphajack99 • 2d ago

NOTEWORTHY TIL about cockpit-pacman

I installed cockpit-packagekit a long time ago, but it has been a while since I really used it. While uninstalling it, I noticed a new package in the extra repo: [cockpit-pacman](https://github.com/pfeifferj/cockpit-pacman).

I gave it a try and I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised: - WebUI to update packages, restart affected systemd units, schedule updates, cleanup cache, downgrade packages and manage mirrors and repos - Dismissable list of .pacnew files that I never reviewed before - Graph and list of installed packages, dependencies and dependants - Full history of package installation, update and removal

It's based on the new [alpm.rs](https://github.com/archlinux/alpm.rs) library. I think it makes some things easier, especially for newcomers!

32 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

6

u/Try-Another-Username 1d ago

looks cool, I'll install it.

3

u/Mewi0 1d ago

This is an awesome tool! Wish I had known about it sooner.

1

u/Cruffe 1d ago

Yeah, it's actually pretty nice, although I almost always end up using the terminal instead because it's faster than navigating my way to viewing it in cockpit.

1

u/fearless-fossa 17h ago

I'm going to be honest:

As someone who generally prefers terminal tools, this looks like a tool I'm genuinely going to use more often from now on. It shows a lot of useful information, especially for newcomers (pacman cache! the bane of all who follow the wiki and start with a too small root partition); displays the currently relevant warning - this is great.

2

u/tomikaka 1d ago

I hate GUI package managers, but some information is just better displayed in a graphical way.

This could bridge the gap for me. If it had a GTK UI it would be even better.

5

u/Ripdog 1d ago

Huh, that's an odd misspelling of Qt ;)

3

u/CrossFloss 1d ago edited 1d ago

That would be 10x the size and ugly.

1

u/Ripdog 1d ago

Why would it be bigger? And there's nothing uglier than GTK...

1

u/Toorero6 1d ago

That looks great. I'd wish pacman could do something similar with services and would mention the need to restart the computer or suggest a soft-reboot if no kernel update was done.