Manjaro: updating, installing and removing packages using Pacman on your terminal or through the GUI.

By Steven GuzmanJanuary 28, 2021

Just like apt for Ubuntu and dnf for Fedora, Manjaro has it’s own package manager called Pacman. In this article we will go through updating, adding, and removing packages using Pacman. We will be using the command line with sudo in order to manage packages. We will also briefly go over installing and removing software through Manjaro’s GUI.

First let's open the terminal by selecting the Manjaro icon on the bottom left, and then clicking on Terminal.

Updating your system

To keep the packages installed on your system up to date use the following command below.

sudo pacman -Syu

or

sudo pacman -Syyu

The above command is used to force a database update if your database is corrupt.

Installing a package

To install a package use the following command syntax below.

sudo pacman -Syu "package name"

Example:

You can also install packages locally or from a mirror with the -U option.

sudo pacman -U /location/of/your/package
sudo pacman -U http://location_of_mirror

Removing packages

To remove a package from your system use the -R option. For example

sudo pacman -R nmap

Using the GUI on Manjaro to manage packages

You can also update install and remove packages through the GUI by selecting the Manjaro icon on the bottom left and searching for Settings Manager.

Once you have the Settings Manager opened, you can select Add/Remove Software underneath System to update install, and remove packages.

And that's it.  Now you can start managing your system packages on Manjaro.