Our terminal is going to be our best friend. In that article we saw that there are many more themes already available for termite on ArcoLinux. There are also many other terminals to choose from. The terminal is the most important part in Linux. You need to learn about it.
We can install software using a graphical user interface or gui like gnome-software or pamac. But a gui is nothing more than an application that passes commands on to the terminal. If you are not yet comfortable with the terminal, you keep using the two alternatives.
But we better learn how to use the terminal.
In particular how to install software in the terminal.
From time to time we will send you to the wiki of Arch Linux. You will find a lot of information there. It can be that, at this point in time, the information is not clear. We will get there.
One of the most important commands is : pacman.
You can remember the name with the words Package Manager. Check out the wiki now.
In short pacman is a package manager that keeps your packages (aka your software) up-to-date, installs them, removes them…
When you install a package it sometimes need other packages to be able to run. Those are dependencies. Pacman will install those as well.
Installing a specific package
Let us install the package Atom. An interesting application to edit conky’s, scripts, css or python files.
sudo pacman -S atom
Type the above line in a terminal and you will have atom on your system. This application is coming from a specific repository or place e.g. extra or testing. If a package is already installed, it will be reinstalled.
But there are also AUR helpers to install software from the AUR. First read here what AUR exactly is.
There seems to be a lot of AUR helpers and everyone seems to have their own preference. So can you. Test them out and choose. Packer is my personal preference. You will see me do it in the tutorials. The AUR seems to be interesting as it hosts many interesting ‘packages’. Not really packages but the way to build or create them. A pkgbuild is a kind of recipe how to make them. Check out all the packages you can install now.
ArchMerge is equipped with 3 AUR helpers. You choose. In ArcoLinux we added trizen to test it out.
packer spotify yaourt spotify pacaur -S spotify trizen spotify
In the tutorial I will install two cloud services. I believe it is the best way to work on linux. Put all the documents you do not want to loose in the cloud and experiment. Learn and be safe at the same time. We will install dropbox and insync (google drive).
Keyboard Shortcuts To Remember
SUPER + T … CTRL + ALT+ T … Super + Enter
Launch your terminal