Don’t want to say this too loud because something will probably screw up…but I’m really liking Manjaro KDE. It’s a great backup distro because it’s not Linux Mint and doesn’t use Cinnamon which is a Linux Mint project. Again it’s not from Linux Mint which depends on Ubuntu which depends on Debian. Right now my biggest fear is a update that trashes it. Because is’s not Ubunto/Debian based software installation is different. So far I have used 3 methods to install software:
1) Octopi to install most software, is much like Linux Mints Software Manager. Search for software click & install.
However discovered that “Blender” was not offered in Octopi.
2) pacman to install “packages”
Search the web and found a Arch “package” for Blender…downloaded it.
It is installed like…
sudo pacman -U blender-16_2.74-3-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
Worked perfectly!
Also install XSane which is a much better scanning program than the Octopi offered SimpleScan
You can search for other packages here: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/
3) a combo of using “makepkg” and “pacman” against files in the AUR.
Wanted to install radiotray. Not in Octopi and no packages.
However it was offered in the AUR (Arch User Repository) as a “.tar.gz”
Now you download that then extract it.
Next you go to its directory and type “makepkg -s” which does a lot of stuff and creates a package.
Finally you execute “sudo pacman -U package” which completes the process.
In general a little more work than installing in Linux Mint…however I never had to personally resolve dependencies which is a huge plus!!! I can live with this.