Welcome to the Arch Linux community! It's great to hear that you're excited to explore a new distribution. I'll answer your questions one by one:
The suggested update frequency for Arch Linux depends on your personal preferences and needs. Many Arch users update their systems daily or every few days, while others stick to a weekly schedule. Updating weekly, like you did with Solus, should work just fine. To update your system with yay, simply run yay -Syu. It will handle both official repository updates and AUR updates. There might be times when you'll need to intervene manually (e.g., resolving conflicts, editing PKGBUILDs), but those situations are relatively rare.
Yes, yay can handle both AUR and main repository updates. Running yay -Syu will update your system, including packages from the official repositories as well as the AUR. You don't need to use pacman separately for this purpose.
To maintain your Arch Linux system and avoid issues, consider these best practices:
Keep your system updated regularly. Read Arch Linux news (https://www.archlinux.org/news/) for any important updates or issues. Avoid installing unnecessary packages or AUR packages with questionable quality. Regularly clean your package cache with paccache -r or paccache -ruk0 to remove old package versions. Check for orphaned packages with pacman -Qdtq and remove them with pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qdtq). Periodically review installed packages and remove those you no longer need. Backup your system and important files regularly. Keep an eye on journalctl and other log files to catch potential issues early. To achieve a cleaner boot experience, you can enable "quiet" boot mode. Edit your /etc/default/grub file and add "quiet" to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line, like this:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"
After saving the changes, run sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg to regenerate the GRUB configuration file. This should reduce the number of messages displayed during boot. Note that hiding these messages might make it harder to diagnose boot-related issues if they arise.
Don't worry about being naive; everyone starts somewhere! The Arch community is here to help you learn and grow. Enjoy your Arch Linux journey!
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