Memorize Most Useful Pacman Commands

If you’re running Arch Linux, or anything Arch-based like CachyOS, you already know that pacman is one of the core tools you’ll use—probably daily.

But let’s be real: remembering all those -S, -R, -Q, and -Syu flags gets confusing fast. I used to look them up constantly (even for simple stuff), until I sat down and made a simple system to actually remember them.

🔧 Basic Concept: Think in Categories

Rather than memorizing every command individually, we grouped them by what we needed to do. Just like you’d do in real life:

• Install something
• Remove something
• Search for something
• Get information
• Clean things up

Turns out, pacman follows this logic really well.

✅ Install & Update Packages

Install a package:

pacman -S <package>

🧠 Remember -S as “Send it to me” (Sync from the repository).

Update everything (the Arch way):

pacman -Syu

🧠 Mnemonic: “Sync, refresh the repos with y, and update everything.”

You’ll use this more than anything else.

🗑️ Remove Packages (Cleanly!)

Remove a package:

pacman -R <package>

Just deletes the program—not configs or dependencies.

Full, squeaky-clean removal:

pacman -Rns <package>

🧠 Rns = Remove Neatly & Squeaky — it deletes the package, its unused dependencies, and leftover config files. I use this when I’m done testing something.

🔍 Searching for Packages

Search available packages (online repo):

pacman -Ss <keyword>

🧠 Ss = Search Store

Search only installed packages:

pacman -Qs <keyword>

🧠 Qs = Query System

📄 Package Information

Get info about a package in the repo:

pacman -Si <package>

Get info about an installed package:

pacman -Qi <package>

List all files a package installed:

pacman -Ql <package>

Find out what package owns a file:

pacman -Qo /path/to/file

🧹 Cleanups & Maintenance

Arch doesn’t clean up after itself by default, so we run these occasionally:

Remove orphaned packages (leftovers):

pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qdtq)

Clean the package cache (but keep most recent):

pacman -Sc

Clean EVERYTHING in the cache:

pacman -Scc

🧠 Scc = Super clean cache (but be careful—you’ll need to re-download packages later).

⚠️ Bonus: Troubleshooting Tools

These aren’t used often, but they’re lifesavers:

• Check missing files from installed packages: pacman -Qk
• Mark a package as explicitly installed: pacman -D --asexplicit <package>
• Mark it as a dependency instead: pacman -D --asdeps <package>

🧠 Trick to Memorize Them All

• We grouped all commands by action. Just ask yourself: Am I installing? Searching? Cleaning?
• Made up little mnemonics:
  • Syu = “Sync Your Universe”
  • Rns = “Remove Neatly & Squeaky”
  • Ss = “Search Store”
  • Qi = “Query Installed”
• Typed them often. Practice helps way more than reading.

📌 Final Cheat Sheet

Here’s a quick reference: