Pacman vs. Discover

[jojuma]

Hello,

for quite a while I used pacman and updated my system in the terminal using:

Code:

pacman -Syyu

Discover often failed to update or didn't report available updates.

Then, once during an update, the wifi connection failed and from then on I got an error message after every reboot saying "Offline update failed - Unexpected system error". Neither pacman nor Discover did any updates any more.
After some research I came to the conclusion, it would be easier to completely reinstall the system than keep trying to fix that problem.

I then reinstalled the latest beta release from https://forum.manjaro.org/c/arm/releases/102.

But now it's the other way round: Discover reports and performs updates while pacman says, there's nothing to do.
I feel completely unsure if either of those methods do their job correctly.

My question is: How can I know for sure, if there are any updates and if my system is up to date or not?

Current system data:
KDE Plasma Version: 5.23.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.87.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.14.17-1-MANJARO-ARM

Thank you!

[tckosvic]

I have been assuming that:

pacman is used to install system (root) packages since you need to login to root.

Also, I have been assuming that:

discover updates and installs user files since you don't login to root for discover.

Thus, I have been using both.  If that is wrong or not needed, let me know.

thanks,      tom kosvic

[acrux]

pacman manages packages provided and organised in repositories by Manjaro.
In addition to that, Discover should be capable for managing also software packaged as flatpak and snap (and appimage?).
So, if you are not using such additional software, using pacman should be sufficient for managing software.

[ryo]

Things like Discover (in KDE) and Software (in Gnome/Phosh) is nice for newcomers to Linux in general, but I think they both need at least a couple of years more before they become more stable.
The best way of installing software (and actually 90% of all the tasks you'd do on a PC, and thus smartphone) will always be the terminal.
Those of us who have been long time Linux users are very comfortable with it, though I can easily understand that your average Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android user would want a Google Play-like GUI solution instead just to be able to get things done.

But I'd recommend you update through the command line, since it's faster, nicer, more stable, and will be beneficial to you in the long run (by that I mean if you don't fall back to the big 2+2).