this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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To be clear, -Qm displays installed packages not currently in the repositories. This will include AUR packages, but I avoid the AUR (except for davmail years ago) every once in a while I'll run it just to check and sometimes it finds packages.
When you install things from the main repos the dependencies get installed too, and if those dependencies are no longer needed they'll be removed from the repositories. (I also have a bad habit of forgetting --asdeps when installing optional dependencies.) Sometimes they'll conflict with a new dependency and pacman will ask to remove and replace them, but other times the functionality has become a part of an existing package, so with no conflict to prompt removal they'll just sit unused on your install. If you haven't tried -Qm in a long while you'll probably find a few harmless currently-unused packages that were installed through the normal repos. (-Qdt will cover the other cases where dependencies remain in the repos but are now only needed for packages you don't have installed.)
Obviously -Qm will also show removed packages that aren't dependencies, a few years back my preferred pdf viewer was removed from the repositories.
-Qm will also find manually installed packages that aren't in the AUR if you ever do that.