• Count Regal Inkwell
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    4 days ago

    I only learned what pacman -Syu meant, after literal years of typing it in not knowing anything other than “this updates the packages”, because I got curious and googled it.

    To me it was just an adeptus mechanicus incantation.

    EDIT: And I still have no clue how ‘y’ translates to ‘refresh the database’. Like. Sure. S to synchronise from the server to the computer. And u to mark for update all the updatable packages. But – Why the fuck is ‘y’ the refresh?

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldM
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      4 days ago

      The y stands for “yoink the database”.

      /s

      I think they either just ran out of letters, or y was seen as reinforcing the action (as in “yes, download the database too”), with yy being an even stronger action (“yes, download the database even if there’s nothing to update”).