Linux

Pacman plus the AUR is the move on Arch based distros. The AUR gives you access to basically everything, and paru or yay handles the build chain without pain. Flatpak has its place for apps that ship messy runtime dependencies, but for most things it adds an unnecessary isolation layer. Have you tried paru as your AUR helper yet?

I use yay, as it comes by default with EndeavourOS. It's basically an AUR helper that uses pacman and works quite the same.

Flatpak is a different package manager and has nothing to do with your system packages. They are not exclusive, I use both. So what you basically asking isn't which package manager people use, but rather which package format.

I don't like Flatpak, so that makes it an easy choice for me. Flatpak apps never quite integrate properly

I like having Flatpaks as a fallback option, but if something is available in the arch repos, aur or chaotic-aur, I'll always go there first

Your question is not Arch specific, it's "should I use flatpaks?" And the answer in my opinion is probably no.

Flatpaks are a good idea to isolate certain applications and to provide a uniform way of installing packages. So there might be some apps that are not available in your native package manager, but do provide flatpaks. For those cases flatpaks are probably preferred. But Arch based distros have the AUR, so there are a lot of apps that aren't packaged for Arch that you can still get as a native package. Sure, using the AUR is risky and if you're not on actual Arch things might break sporadically because of mismatched dependencies (although I think CachyOS is full parity of packages with Arch, so that's maybe more of a Manjaro warning).

But flatpaks are clunky, bloated, require annoying permissions to be set to do basic things, and require you to update two package managers to do a full system update. They are more appealing for systems where you don't want to give users root access but still allow them to install programs, but for your own computer I have never seen the appeal.

Paru, so Pacman & AUR...

With exactly one exception: Steam via flatpak because that's the single package left that would need 32bit libraries from multilib-repo since Wine finally left those dependencies behind.

I use paru

You can choose between things like flatpak or aur packages, but you're gonna have to use pacman either way, since your core packages are still managed by pacman even if you decide to install most things through flatpak. Just wanted to point that out in case you were thinking of not using it at all anymore, cause it's definitely not good to have your system get extremely out of date overtime. Having said that, it's a matter of preference. The aur has more packages available, but flatpak has verified packages available, so assuming you stick to those, it could be safer. It also offers things like sandboxing. When i was on arch i only used the aur. I usually go with whatever has the most packages available or whatever is most convenient.

Look into the Chaotic AUR. It offers pre compiled AUR programs. Almost every app I really need has been there. If it's not in there and I really need it and will get used often I'll get it from the AUR.

I dont really like flatpaks much. I'll use it if it's easy and I dont plan on using the app much. Apps like Bottles. They are nice to have but rarely do I use it.

when both are available it's hard to decide.

It's easy to decide: AUR (only)

Personally, I use pacman for as much as I can, then dip into yay for anything else.

What do you mean by "bloated"? How many more bytes does the flatpak version have compared to its counterpart?

I use an unholy blend of paru, Flatpak, Docker and AppImage apps (no Snap!) with Topgrade to update it all.

Personally, I use pacman when possible and flatpak when it's not. I try to avoid the aur as I have had too many problems with missing dependencies or version conflicts. Plus, I don't generally need things that are not in the repositories so it rarely comes up.

"But flatpaks are not lean!" While this is true, I find flatpaks don't break my system. Flatpaks do use more resources, from storage to RAM, but I have plenty of both so it's not really a concern.

My reason for using arch linux is to have as little bloat as possible. So, pacman. Yay sometimes for AUR stuff, but my need for it is rare.

Always use native pkgs if possibile (so use pacman/paru)

I use native packages wherever possible, then flatpak's after that, and then aur pretty much only for things that don't run well in flatpaks. I really don't want to have to look through 50 different pkgbuilds every time there's an update and the downsides to flatpaks are, I believe, largely overstated

pacman / yay

I also like pacseek as it provides a simple tui for package search and getting info about packages.

Yay. Add ssu (a 120 loc C tool) as "sudobin" in it's config and you've got a passwordless package manager.

And btw, that question is covered already.

I just reinstalled arch last weekend and have both paru and yay installed. Only real difference between them is yay is Go and paru is Rust. Both work great and very similarly. I think the paru dev originally worked on yay.

I tend to choose the pacman and aur over flatpaks or snaps, something about the isolation layer never sat right with me.

Shelly is another option, comes pre installed on CachyOS. It's aiming to modernise pacman. It's been pretty good for my usage.

It has a GUI that can handle native repos, the AUR, flatpaks and app images. It can also be used in your CLI as well

pacman /w chaotic-aur.

I don't need the AUR directly, a GUI, or other managers. Just what came with my system + chaotic works just fine.

edit: typo

For command line apps, I use paru for AUR. For desktop apps, if they’re available as a flatpak, I prefer that for the increased security provided by the sandbox. Otherwise I use Arch packages or AUR. I even uninstall GNOME apps (calendar, weather) from pacman, and install their flatpaks.

I have both yay and paru on the two Arch systems I manage, because pacman tends to break those occasionally through dependencies and that way I don't have to do the whole makepkg bit again and instead can update the one with the other. I still find it asinine that these aren't in the repos or the functionality isn't integrated in to pacman, but since Arch's entire philosophy is based on simplicity, I guess the chosen solution to secure user packages is security by obscurity.

(I only still use Arch on those systems because I haven't gotten around to migrate them to Gentoo yet, after implementing a binpkg repo and custom profiles many years ago so compiling on the weaker machines is essentially unnecessary, btw.)

i used their version of discover (forgot the name) and found it has mostly everything i was looking for (surprisingly so)

Yay

I only use flatpak for one Python program because it has a lot of runtime dependencies I don't want to bother with. I generally wouldn't use flatpak.

Im running arch proper, nothing come pre-installed. But I originally used paru and then installed yay cuz I was troubleshooting something. Never removed it.

Fo what it’s worth, it doesn’t hurt anything to have multiple installed so you can see which you like. They shouldn’t interfere with eachother.