Manjaro rolling release updates, uninstalling apps, cleaning cache #019

In less then 2 months, Manjaro Plasma received 3 major updates, above 1 Gigabyte of updates each time, to minimize the download size some unused applications can be removed, here is a list of what I removed:

   kamera (0,59Mb)
   kdeconnect (KDE connect  - 3,1Mb)
   KGet (11Mb)
   kwalletmanager (KWallet Manager - 2,3Mb)
   Skanlite (2,7Mb)
   Timeshift (3,5Mb)
   Flatpack (6,3Mb)
   Steam
   hplip (HP Device manager - 28,5Mb)
   system-config-printer (Print Settings - 6,8Mb)
   cups (Manage Printing - 12,9Mb)
   The following are for APPLE printing system CUPS
       gst-plugins-bad (8,11Mb)
       zbar (0,44Mb)
       imagemagick (9,70Mb)
       cups-filters (3,1Mb)
       foomatic-db-engine (903,2Kb)

  all wallpapers (plasma-workspace ; wallpapers-juhraya; 2018; manjaro; iilyria )

 for onboard intel graphics, remove nvidia and radeon stuff:
  lib32-vulkan-radeon (6,17Mb)
  vulkan-radeon (6,08Mb)
 note: the wallpaper that is selected will stay installed, might be a bug.

Performing updates

Before performing updates, or if  no update notifications are received, refreshing the package lists might be useful:

sudo pacman -Syy

Some issues might occur if you are working and performing updates at the same time, its possible to download all updated packages and then perform the update while the user is logged out.

Update(05/2021) : after no using a Manjaro system for some time the update process fails, the solution was to update pacman first, it solved issues with Keys :

sudo pacaman -S pacman


To make large updates, open terminal and type the following command to download all packages:

sudo pacman -Syuw

Log out and switch to TTY2 by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F2. Enter username and password and run:

sudo pacman -Su

Pacman has a log with extra info /var/log/pacman.log,  useful to check after large updates.

Install applications offline


Download the application files: .tar.gz .tar.bz2 and copy those files to /var/cache/pacman/pkg,  then use:

pacman -S package_name

or type the following command to force the installation of a local package:

pacman -U /path/to/package/package_name-version.pkg.tar.xz

to remove a package:

pacman -R package_name

to remove a package and its dependencies:

pacman -Rs package_name

Cleaning the updates packages

Pacman does not delete previous version pkg files and stores them in /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ , the folder will occupy a very large space after large updates, its possible to tune this to:

Set pacman to only keep 1 version in the pkg cache:

paccache -rk1

Remove all cached versions of uninstalled packages:

paccache -ruk0

Remove all the cached packages that are not currently installed:

pacman -Sc

Remove all files from the cache, use the clean switch twice:

pacman -Scc

Arch/Manjaro linux stores language files for applications, they are called locale, its possible to clean them using localepurge application,  install it via pacman, then edit the configuration file :
 etc/locale.nopurge , follow the file instructions, comment the NEEDSCONGIGFIRST

Then run command in terminal:

sudo: localepurge

Cleaning the journal

check the size that is used by the journal:

 journalctl --disk-usage

remove all journal logs older then 2 days:

 journalctl --vacuum-time=2days

Cleaning locale (Language packages):

several applications install language packages at /usr/share/locale, the folder can grow pretty quick, removing other languages will free up some space, localepurge application does this:

install localepurge app from AUR repository in pacman/pamac

first time you run it, it will request that you configure it:


edit file with nano:

sudo nano /etc/locale.nopurge

add the comment symbol # to:

#NEEDSCONFIGFIRST

add the languages to keep, folder in  /usr/share/locale list what languages are available, in my case I will keep:

en
en_GB
en_GB.UTF-8
en_US
en_US.UTF-8
pt
pt_PT
pt-PT

save file and then run localepurge again:

sudo localepurge

and the output is:



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