Yes, I love package managers that don't provide a mechanism for signing code. I also love compromised mirrors.

That is being fixed "right now"[1], they seem to have most of it implemented (yes, obviously testing and documentation is still needed before its ready for non dev-branch release).

[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=115528 (I haven't bothered checking the mailing list, but the latest forum post in that thread was two or three days ago)

I just don't understand how a distro can call a package manager with unsigned packages ready for a stable branch. It's irresponsible, and if they don't care about that kind of basic need for a package manager, I don't want to put myself in a position where I'll discover (too late) what sort of other obvious oversights they've made.

How that? You cannot even properly search for packages by name. It always searches the description too. Try searching for opera or even only packages that start with opera*.

I love Archlinux but I really miss aptitude.

I just tried the following:

  $ pacman -Ss ^opera

and got this:

  community/opera 11.01-1
      A fast and secure web browser and Internet suite.

Is that what you wanted to do?

Thanks! I swear that did not work some months ago.

I've been using Arch for almost two years and its always worked. I guess your argument may have been slightly wrong (no s after S or something perhaps).

I would, however, recommend using a wrapper like yaourt which can install from AUR too. With yaourt, iirc (I don't exactly install packages very often these days, since I have everything I need), I can just go:

yaourt opera