Managing applications

Different ways of installing applications

What you would refer to as an application, is called a package on linux. There are multiple ways to install a package and multiple formats they come in. Usually you will be installing the packges from you package manager, which in our case is pacman.

However sometimes this isn't the best solution due to various reasons.

• You do not want to upgrade from the current version, but instead want both versions
• Dependency breaking
• You want to install an older version which isn't possible by pacman.

The ideal solution would be something like nix package manager. But I would recommend trying out the alternatives first, as nix might be hard to understand for people new to linux package management.