pacman
Hacker ApprovedRanked 10 of 35 package managers by recommenders
Recommended for simple, stable package management on Arch Linux, with fast updates and trusted repositories. The most common caveat is that upgrades can occasionally break a system.
Recommended for simple, stable package management on Arch Linux, with fast updates and trusted repositories. The most common caveat is that upgrades can occasionally break a system.
44 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 37
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 84%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 1 year
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 37 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Simple, clean package management
“beautifully simple package manager. It covers the complexity just enough without going overboard.”
Comment from 15 Feb 2026 in “I Fixed Windows Native Development” “Makes it a lot easier to install packages”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Bazzite: Operating System for Linux gaming” Stable for years, upgrades trusted
“working fine for over two decades on multiple architectures”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “A Year of Work on the Arch Linux Package Management (ALPM) Project” “I can still happily upgrade via pacman without fear”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “ReactOS (FOSS "Windows") achieves 3D-accelerated Half-Life on real hardware” “pacman does have its pitfalls, but aside from upgrades, it's been appliance-level stable”
Comment from 7 Jan 2026 in “Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files” Faster than APT
“how much faster pacman was compared to APT”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew” “I find it does help speed things up.”
Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “Wayland Nvidia” Vetted repositories, easy search
“pacman installs from regular, real, vetted repositories by default.”
Comment from 20 Jun 2026 in “AURpocalypse now: a look at the recent AUR attacks” “I get a lot of mileage out of package repository search”
Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “Blog: PyPI in 2025: A Year in Review”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Upgrades can break the system
“A bugged update that I applied via pacman broke PAM”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “KDE Plasma Login Manager Won't Support systemd-Free Linux or BSD Systems” “pacman does have its pitfalls, but aside from upgrades, it's been appliance-level stable”
Comment from 7 Jan 2026 in “Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsofts cloud app that steals and deletes files” “Pacman is easy to screw up an update with.”
Comment from 17 Mar 2026 in “OpenSUSE Kalpa” Dependency resolution gets complicated
“the main issues I had were more to do with how Pacman can get insanely nuanced”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux” “it fails to find correct answers to dependency resolution problems”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew”
Other package managers people recommend
The four most recommended other package managers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 35 package managers, rankedWhat people said
39 of the 46 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Nix is even easier than pacman/AUR from a maintenance perspective”
“pacman and AUR are just so peak”
“Importing software/code at runtime from the internet (like Apt, Go, Pacman, Pip, NPM, etc.) is the equivalent of those dreadful online stub installer packages”
“I like pacman for example.”
“go to pacman/apt and boom everything is right there”
“pacman installs from regular, real, vetted repositories by default.”
“pacman also tracks the installed files and uninstalling is a breeze”
“I can still happily upgrade via pacman without fear”
“I do wish pacman would support a user level installations.”
“outside of pacman, these were equipment to learn programming”
“critique of pacman and other managers was that it needed to offer human sounding commands”
“we're still pretty far away for apt/yum/pacman installed packages”
“pacman and that worked so well”
“it's easier to catch such issue”
“it fails to find correct answers to dependency resolution problems”
“how much faster pacman was compared to APT”
“Nix is just another chef, ansible, cfengine, apt, pacman”
“Pacman is easy to screw up an update with.”
“beautifully simple package manager. It covers the complexity just enough without going overboard.”
“I wasn't that impressed with pacman to be honest”
“Is it really that difficult to use apt, pacman, or BSD's "pkg"?”
“while testing some commands in pacman, there were a bunch of Python-related packages”
“I have become quite used to managing my Linux installations with pacman over the past year or so”
“pacman's "I don't care, this is the new file and I overwrite what I see" is very dangerous behavior.”
“A bugged update that I applied via pacman broke PAM”
“just stick to pacman + git/makepkg”
“pacman doesn't do this. If you'd modified a config file, it will create a .pacnew version instead of replacing it.”
“the main issues I had were more to do with how Pacman can get insanely nuanced”
“if you just use "yay" you don't run into Pacman woes”
“If I install it from pacman or manage to get an AUR build working, my life is pretty good.”
“The AUR wouldn't exist without pacman&makepkg.”
“working fine for over two decades on multiple architectures”
“pacman does have its pitfalls, but aside from upgrades, it's been appliance-level stable”
“I get a lot of mileage out of package repository search”
“Pacman is the best, you'd have to pry Arch from my cold, dead hands.”
“I find it does help speed things up.”
“Makes it a lot easier to install packages”
“the update command above fixed it”
“make it past 5 sudo pacman -syu iterations”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.