Shelly Is A GUI Package Manager For Arch Linux

For those of you that run Arch Linux or an Arch Linux based distribution such as a Casio S Endeavour OS Manjaro Zero Linux many of the other dozens of Arch Linux based distributions. If you're somebody that doesn't like using the Pac-Man package manager so your command line way of installing and removing software. Maybe you want a graphical software center. You want a GUI software center. Well, there is a really cool graphical software center available for those of you on Arch Linux and that application is called Shelly. Now, what is Shelly? Shelly is a modern visual and intuitive interface for your Arch Linux system. It's not just a wrapper but a native ground-up experience. Now, what does that blurb mean? Well, it's really just a fancy way of saying hey, it's a really cool application. It's got support for your main Arch packages. It's also got support for AUR packages. That's a big one on Arch Linux. We also have support for flat packs and app images with Shelly if you want to enable that stuff as well. So, you got a lot of stuff going on with Shelly. You can see AUR and flat pack support. It's also got app image support although here on the main page, it doesn't look like they're pushing that. I think that is rather new and they're still kind of a working on the app image support as well. But, you can see you can actually install Shelly with sudo Pac-Man capital S Shelly if you're on Casio S because it is in the standard Casio S repos. Now, if you're running mainline Arch or a system where Shelly isn't in those repos, you can always install Shelly as a AUR package so you can install it with Paru. Shelly is also available as a flat pack so you can install it using flat pack if you prefer and if you have the chaotic AUR enabled, you can also use sudo Pac-Man capital S Shelly, which is what I'm going to be doing. I'm going to uh, use the chaotic AUR because this is a mainline Arch system here on the computer at my house. I do have the chaotic AUR enabled though, so I can use sudo Pacman capital S Shelly. So, let me go ahead and copy this command. I'm going to go to an empty workspace and let me open a terminal. Let me make it full screen. Let me zoom way in. Clear the screen here. Let me paste that command and let me go ahead and install Shelly on this machine because I haven't installed it yet. And there you go. You can see it's a in the chaotic AUR. Again, on Cashew, which my uh, office computer runs Cashew OS, it's in the standard Cashew repos. And now that I've got that installed, let me go ahead and launch Shelly. So, this is Shelly. Let me go ahead and click the front page here of Shelly. I'll make uh, the application full screen. And if I expand the sidebar, you can see the little heart symbol here was the recommended uh, page. So, this is recommended software. It's just your curated list of popular applications they're pushing on you. And it's uh, categorized audio, browsers, communication, games, yada yada yada. This is very nice for those that are brand new to Linux and don't know what software is even available on Linux. I mean, you wouldn't go to the command line and just start searching at the command line cuz you need to know the names of the program. So, this graphical kind of system is good for discovery if you're not sure what is available. For example, what web browsers do we even have on Linux? Well, here's some of the popular ones right here in this list that you could check out. And then if I expand this sidebar here, we have packages. So, this is probably where you're going to spend most of your time. This is your standard Arch packages. And you get a nice little grid kind of layout here that's very easy to navigate. Search for any package. You can even install local packages if you download something, you know, an Arch package and you want to install or you build your own Arch packages even, which is something, you know, I've done a lot over the years, but if I was searching for a particular package, I don't know, Htop, I've already got it installed. You can see I've got it installed. It's got a check box here, but if I didn't, you know, I can tick this box here and I could install it, reinstall it in this case, but I don't need it. It's very easy, very intuitive kind of program to use. Let me clear out that search there. Also, under the packages here, other than the install tab, we have updates. I can update my system and we have manage. So, this is the local files I have installed on my system here. I can browse those locally installed packages and then we have the categories I enabled. So, other than the standard Arch packages, we have AUR, Flatpak and AppImage. So, let's check out AUR. It says search for AUR packages. So, let me search for one. How about Zoom? Now, I have installed Zoom on this computer, but I don't think I installed it from the AUR. I think I installed it either as a Flatpak or a Snap. I can't remember. So, it doesn't look like I installed it from the AUR though because it doesn't mention that I already have it installed. So, if I clicked on it, you know, ticked the box, yeah. Now, I could click install AUR package and it would install Zoom from the AUR. I'm going to cancel that because I already got it installed as a Flatpak I think. I don't need that. We could also update our AUR packages. So, if I wanted to move over here, it's going to tell me what I've got installed. I don't have a whole lot installed from the AUR right now, but if I wanted to install a specific package or upgrade all of them, I have I move my camera out of the way. Let me move my head. Got the upgrade all button here. Also, got updates, 433 down here. So, I'm assuming those updates would upgrade everything, the regular packages and the AUR packages, but if I wanted to separate that out, you could certainly just update your AUR here for flat packs as well. It's loading flatpack data. Cuz I just installed this, right? It's the first time it's syncing all of this data on this computer. But now you get a nice curated list of flat packs that it's, you know, recommending. So again, for discovery of software, new users are going to really like this. You also got a breakdown by categories as well. And of course, you can search for packages if you know the name. For example, I know Zoom is available well, as a flatpack as well. There it is. I can click on it, get my little summary and, you know, what repo is it in? Well, it's in flathub. And I can install it as the system or my DT user. So, I'm going to decline taking that installation as well, since I've already got it. And then we have the app image tab. It says drop app images here to install. I don't have any app images to install. I have a few app images already on the system, but I don't have anything that I just grabbed off the internet. But I'm assuming it would be like any other launcher that handles app images. It's going to create your desktop file. So, that app image now would appear like in a proper menu system if you run a desktop environment with a menu system, like a Gnome or a KDE or something like that. We also have sync all and upgrade all next to the install app image button. So, sync all, I'm assuming would search all of your app image directories. So, for example, most people are going to put their app images in home/applications with a capital A. That's where I've got all my app images. I don't know if any of them are auto updating anyway. So, yes, operation complete. None of those app images that I have have an update available. So, nothing to do there. Or that was a sync. Let's see, upgrade all. Maybe, yeah. No app images need to be upgraded. So, nothing to do for me on this computer. So, and that's really it for this uh Shelly GUI package manager. Very easy to understand, very easy to use. You have the little three-dot menu down here, and you do have some settings you could play with. For example, enable AUR, flatpak, appimage. I already had all of this enabled, but if you didn't want this enabled, you could certainly turn all of that off if you want. It does come with its own system tray icon up here, and you could turn this off and on as well. As far as do you want the uh uh the disable the tray icon? You can disable it if you want. If you got it enabled, though, do you want it to auto start every time you log in? For me, I do not have it auto starting. Uh do you want to use a weekly schedule, I guess, for your updates? Or you know, I'm not This is not something I'm going to use on a regular basis, because I actually prefer just using pacman and paru and all of that at the command line. But, this is a really cool GUI application. One thing I do like in the settings, though, is you do have some easy ways to fix common pacman issues. For example, have you ever had the database lock file on you? Where you go to sudo pacman -Syu, and it says, "Can't update the system because of db.lck", which is the database lock. There's a lock on the pacman database. Well, you can remove that lock. Remove db.lck. Basically, that does a sudo rm uh db.lock, right? It removes that file, and now you'll be able to update the system. You can force the database update. You can view pac files. You can fix permission problems. You can purify packages. So, it's really cool uh uh uh get guess uh system maintenance kind of stuff here that you can do, also. You also have some advanced things like uh parallel downloads. It's set to 10 out of the box. You can adjust that if you want. You can enable package downgrades. I I wouldn't do that unless you have a real need to do that, cuz, you know, that's more advanced. You can do uh turn on no confirm, so don't confirm whether I I really want to you know reinstall or overwrite things and all of that. I wouldn't turn on no confirm. I think you should have confirmations if you just in case you actually know what's going on when you're running these commands. So unless you really know what some of this stuff means, I would not play with those settings. So that is a very quick and cursory look at Shelly, a GUI package manager for Arch Linux and Arch based distros. Take care guys. Peace.