Jacman

Jacman project is a Java application that serves as a frontend for pacman, the software management software that accompanies the exceptional ArchLinux operating system. ArchLinux's philosophy places emphasis on user control, and thus GUI-based configuration tools that hide functionality were deemed as "anti-Arch". While developing Jacman, the aim was to create a tool that adheres to ArchLinux's philosophy, but some inevitable deviations were made.

Jacman is only an interface to pacman, and as such, not all of pacman's features are accessible through Jacman. However, this was intentional. Jacman was designed to provide an easy and convenient visual window for common tasks like installing, updating, removing, and re-syncing packages. Its minimalism allows users to explore available packages quickly.

Key features of Jacman include installing, updating, removing, and rolling-back installed packages. To use the software, the user must have pacman installed on their system.

The latest version of Jacman comes with various improvements. The update introduces better aesthetics, color highlighting of packages that are in-date or out-of-date (similar to distrowatch), bugfixes that allow the use of non-default pacman.conf, performance updates, and additional eye-candy improvements.