I just use pacman and yay. I avoid flatpaks as best I can, I don’t see the hype.

Yay

I only use flatpak for one Python program because it has a lot of runtime dependencies I don’t want to bother with. I generally wouldn’t use flatpak.

There is pacman + aur and then there is flatpak.

This is sort of like asking “which fruit juice do you use, an acme apple juicer or a blamco orange juicer.” If I need a flatpak, I use flatpak. Sometimes things only have flatpaks and aren’t on the AUR.

If it’s on both, nowadays I typically prefer the non-flatpak version, but that’s just sort of vibe based, I don’t really have a good reason. I think I ran into a few (very minor) problems with flatpaks (that were probably easy to fix) that I didn’t have with the non-flatpak version and that skewed me in that direction.

when both are available it’s hard to decide.

It’s easy to decide: AUR (only)

Personally, I use pacman for as much as I can, then dip into yay for anything else.

I have both yay and paru on the two Arch systems I manage, because pacman tends to break those occasionally through dependencies and that way I don’t have to do the whole makepkg bit again and instead can update the one with the other. I still find it asinine that these aren’t in the repos or the functionality isn’t integrated in to pacman, but since Arch’s entire philosophy is based on simplicity, I guess the chosen solution to secure user packages is security by obscurity.

(I only still use Arch on those systems because I haven’t gotten around to migrate them to Gentoo yet, after implementing a binpkg repo and custom profiles many years ago so compiling on the weaker machines is essentially unnecessary, btw.)

My reason for using arch linux is to have as little bloat as possible. So, pacman. Yay sometimes for AUR stuff, but my need for it is rare.

pacman / yay

I also like pacseek as it provides a simple tui for package search and getting info about packages.

For command line apps, I use paru for AUR. For desktop apps, if they’re available as a flatpak, I prefer that for the increased security provided by the sandbox. Otherwise I use Arch packages or AUR. I even uninstall GNOME apps (calendar, weather) from pacman, and install their flatpaks.

pacman + yay + appman (in cases where appimage is more convenient)

If you need something from AUR, Chaotic AUR builds some of them.

Technically I also use managers for certain languages and environments, so sometimes cargo, pip, luarocks, … whatever.

I did try to use flatpak in the past, but I just found it annoying. If you do not explicitly need it’s capabilities for a certain app it is mostly makes accessing app’s config and data a major annoyance imo.

I use paru

Pacman plus the AUR is the move on Arch based distros. The AUR gives you access to basically everything, and paru or yay handles the build chain without pain. Flatpak has its place for apps that ship messy runtime dependencies, but for most things it adds an unnecessary isolation layer. Have you tried paru as your AUR helper yet?

Paru, so Pacman & AUR…

With exactly one exception: Steam via flatpak because that’s the single package left that would need 32bit libraries from multilib-repo since Wine finally left those dependencies behind.

I use an unholy blend of paru, Flatpak, Docker and AppImage apps (no Snap!) with Topgrade to update it all.

I use yay, as it comes by default with EndeavourOS. It’s basically an AUR helper that uses pacman and works quite the same.

Flatpak is a different package manager and has nothing to do with your system packages. They are not exclusive, I use both. So what you basically asking isn’t which package manager people use, but rather which package format.

pacman /w chaotic-aur.

I don’t need the AUR directly, a GUI, or other managers. Just what came with my system + chaotic works just fine.

edit: typo