fman is out on Arch Linux
After many requests from users, fman is finally available on Arch Linux. Here's what it looks like on KDE:
The Arch implementation isn't just a shallow "here are the binaries" solution. Quite the opposite: fman fully integrates with pacman, Arch's package manager. This is especially important because Arch is a rolling-release distribution with a strong emphasis on continuous updates.
You can obtain fman from the Arch User Repository as follows:
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/fman.git cd fman makepkg -si
A slightly faster alternative is to download the pre-built package and install it with:
pacman -U fman.pkg.tar.xz
To enable automatic updates for fman, you can use the following commands:
pacman-key --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 -r 9CFAF7EB pacman-key --lsign-key 9CFAF7EB echo -e '\n[fman]\nServer = https://fman.io/updates/arch' \ >> /etc/pacman.conf
A cool feature of the implementation is that it uses pacman's dependency mechanism for fetching (amongst others) the Qt library. If you are using Arch with KDE (and thus already have Qt), this means that no unnecessary libraries are installed.
Possibly an even greater advantage is that dependencies managed by pacman are guaranteed (or at least more likely) to work on your exact system. In particular, the new release fixes at least one bug that was caused by incompatibilities between fman's Qt version and the version present on recent KDE builds.
A pleasant surprise during the implementation was that fman had already been added to the Arch User Repository by an fman user, Dmitry Romanov. His listing was expanded for better integration into pacman. Further, it is now automatically updated whenever a new version of fman is released. Thank you for the original upload and for giving me write access to the package, Dmitry!
This was my first foray into the World of Arch Linux. Arch has a unique approach and it's been a very interesting experience. Nevertheless, I'm still new to it. If you feel I have made a mistake, please let me know.
Michael started fman in 2016, convinced that we deserve a better file manager. fman's launch in 2017 was a huge success. But despite full-time work, it only makes $500 per month. The goal is to fix this.
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