I am a Linux noobie and have only used Mint for around six months now. While I have definitely learned a lot, I don’t have the time to always be doing crazy power user stuff and just want something that works out of the box. While I love Mint, I want to try out other decently easy to use distros as well, specifically not based on Ubuntu, so no Pop OS. Is Manjaro a possibly good distro for me to check out?
I never recommend Manjaro, even for experienced users. Multiple times, they’ve let their ssl certificats expire, and renewing those has been easy to automate for a number of years at this point. There have been a number of cases where they ship work-in-progress versions of software as part of their default install, and there was an open letter posted calling this out: https://dont-ship.it
So in my opinion, Manjaro leaves much to be desired from a project governance standpoint.
Now, using an Arch-based distro that does the install process for you doesn’t absolve you from learning what it takes to maintain an Arch install; at some point, something will crop-up that requires manual intervention to get back up & running again after an update.
If that is what you’re looking for, I suggest EndeavourOS.
Every time I use Manjaro something horribly breaks. It’s odd though because I daily drive endeavour now and it’s been rock solid with no issues other than my own stupidity in partitioning my drives. I would stay away from Manjaro personally and use endeavour if you’re dedicated to arch. If you want a rolling release distro then rhino Linux just released their first major version and it’s a rolling release Ubuntu distro. Either way my opinion is the same, Manjaro was good for it’s time, but it’s been overshadowed and buried by other arch distros that are way more stable.
Mankato is easy to use and looks nice but I’ve also been using it for years. It has the power of the AUR but if people are saying other might be better they might be right. I would just stick to something Arch based because of the AUR. I saw a comment about endeavor and I might try it myself.
I run Manjaro as my gaming rig and have had no real issues.
Me too. 🙌
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It does! But I recently gave Bazzite a try…yeah I’m not ready for this so-called atomic distro (it’s based on Fedora). I’m now, for the moment, settled on Garuda Linux (based on Arch). I’m liking it thus far, but if anything goes awry, I may head back to Manjaro. Garuda is much closer to Arch prime (running 6.8.9 linux-zen kernel where Manjaro is on 6.6.x still). And the chaotic-aur is actually kinda nice. Time will tell if I stick with it!
If you want to try out other distros without friction, spin up a virtual machine via Gnome Boxes or virt-manager with some different distros
I don’t have the time to always be doing crazy power user stuff and just want something that works out of the box.
otherwise why change whats running for you?
it would be better as an arch installer and a couple of extra packages - not completely different repos
What even is an unbiased opinion? That doesn’t even begin to make sense.
That being said, my very biased opinion is that it’s a great way to install Arch without learning how Arch works so that when it inevitably breaks you don’t even know how to ask the right questions.
“Unbiased opinion” is an oxymoron.
Personally, I think the idea that you can’t ask the right questions because you haven’t installed Arch manually is a silly notion that’s borderline gatekeeping. It’s why Arch users have the reputation that they do and why Arch itself has a reputation for being difficult even though it really isn’t.
Over the years, I’ve moved from Manjaro to Antergos to Endeavor, and then finally the official
archinstalltool. I probably will never be arsed to install Arch by hand, but it doesn’t mean that when something breaks I don’t know how to consult the Arch Wiki and fix it myself.Do users of other distros not know how to ask the right questions? Are Arch users the only ones who know their system inside and out? I don’t think so. Every person has their own threshold for how much investment they want to make into learning about their system, no matter the distro.
The reason Arch users all end up like this is that we’ve all tried to help someone, been run around for hours, and then finally figured out that the problem is caused by some stupid thing that Manjaro did despite the person insisting the whole time that they’re using Arch and there’s literally nothing we could do to help, only to be called an elitist gatekeeper for trying to point it out because “It’s the same thing.” Fuck that, and fuck you for calling me a gatekeeper.
If you want to use Arch use Arch. You are welcome to use it. It’s not actually hard. If you can read a wiki, you can install Arch. It’s not a fucking herculean task that only super-geniuses can manage. I get it. Some people’s brains don’t mesh with the wiki style of information presentation, and that’s okay. That doesn’t make you inferior or unintelligent, but if you think the Arch wiki is good for other things then you can just install it in an afternoon. I promise. And you’ll learn more in that afternoon than you learn in a year of using Manjaro. Seriously. I’m not kidding.
If that’s not what you want, there are almost certainly other distros that are way, waaaaaaay better for you than any Arch-based distro is. I can’t actually stop anyone from using Manjaro, or Endeavor, or whatever else they want to use, and I wouldn’t want to be able to. I’m not in charge of your life. If you want to do something stupid you should be able to make that choice. I just want to point out how stupid it is. Is that so wrong?
This is a great explanation of the frustration that Arch users have supporting Manjaro users. The problem is a subtle error in the lesson learned. It is not that Arch is uniquely better. It is that Manjaro uniquely sucks.
The idea of Manjaro is great. It is just poorly executed ( but well enough that you have to use it for quite some time to understand that ).
Other Arch derivatives do not have these issues.
You simultaneously complain that you’re being called an elitist gatekeeper and in the same damn breath call everyone else who doesn’t share your opinions of Arch-purism stupid. That is a textbook example of gatekeeping dude.
The reason Arch users all end up like this is that we’ve all tried to help someone, been run around for hours, and then finally figured out that the problem is caused by some stupid thing that Manjaro did
This is a made up situation. I am an Arch user and I have never been so incensed about derivative differences that I felt the need to restrict help to only pure Arch users like I am running some product support hotline. Please, give me a break. Why do we have to be so damned picky about who we help? There’s always going to be differences between my system and another person’s system which can make debugging confusing, even between two separate pure-Arch systems, but that’s part of the fun! And so what if they’re using Manjaro? A ton of problems in the Linux space are distro-agnostic and more due to wrong configuration, etc. If you don’t want to help them, that’s fine, just move on instead of pretending like their entire community committed some cardinal sin against you. Can RHEL users not help out Fedora users? What about Ubuntu vs Mint? Is it really so damned hard to be like “Hey, I can’t figure out your problem. It could be that there’s some differences between Arch and Manjaro” and just move on with your life?
It’s fine if you don’t want to contribute to these kinds of things, but insisting Arch-derivative users stop using them and or be shunned from interaction is gatekeeping to be perfectly frank. There are many reasons why some people might prefer an Arch-derivative. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t make them any less valid for other people who have different usecases and preferences than you.
I can’t fucking help a Manjaro user if Manjaro just broke an AUR package by having the wrong version of a dependency. It’s not that I don’t want to help. It’s that somebody lied to me for hours while I was trying to help them, and then when I tried to explain why I couldn’t they started spewing the exact same bullshit name calling that you’re using right now. If thinking that’s a bad thing that should be avoided makes me a “gatekeeper” to you then fine. I’ll wear that gatekeeper badge with pride. We all do stupid things sometimes, I’m just trying to help people who will listen do it less. If you think that means I’m calling you stupid, that’s your opinion.
Go fuck yourself. I’m done with this conversation.
It’s that somebody lied to me for hours
So you let one person define your opinion of an entire community and distro? Mmm okay.
they started spewing the exact same bullshit name calling that you’re using right now
If multiple people are calling you out on your behavior, then maybe its time to look inward instead of being so defensive. Just look at this convo. Right off the bat you’ve called an entire community stupid for having preferences different than you, shat on a distro you don’t even use as your daily driver, and then told me to go fuck myself twice. This is just classic “I am not wrong, everybody else is wrong” behavior. Check your toxicity dude.
In my entire life it’s happened twice and you think that’s proof that I’m the problem, and not just that I’ve met two assholes in 45 years? Sure dude.
So you admit that it’s super rare you encounter these bad Manjaro users that have offended you so much, and then decide to make generalizations about the entire Manjaro community and the distro? Yes, you absolutely ARE the problem.
Let me put it this way. If in real life you went into a crowd of people, called them all stupid for being there, and told a few of them to go fuck themselves, you would get punched in the face. Just because you’re on the Internet doesn’t make this kind of behavior okay.
From this comment thread, I can already tell you simply don’t understand why anyone would use a computer in a different way than you do. It’s absolutely fine to be opinionated about how you want to run your personal machines, but to tell others so vehemently that they’re wrong for wanting a different computing experience other than the one you’ve “deemed” correct…well that’s just silly.
It’s not wrong for someone to want something in between, say for example Fedora or Ubuntu, and Arch. Heck, the reason why so many Arch-derivatives exist is because a lot of people want it. You telling other people that they either go full-Arch or they’re stupid IS gatekeeping.
As an Arch user this is how I feel about Manjaro as well. Installing Arch not only allows you to customize every aspect from the shell to the DE and more but also teaches you how to maintain and fix your OS when it breaks.
The best Arch-based distro is Arch.
I disagree. Not everyone wants to spend the time to completely customize their system. Distros like Manjaro and Endeavor give people a decent “just works” install while still giving them experience with the Arch ecosystem. The forums are usually a good resource, and everything on the arch wiki still applies. It might just be because I had previous linux experience, but I’ve learned a lot running Manjaro.
The average person is not going to jump straight into vanilla Arch as their first distro, but after a couple years with Manjaro, they might try it.
If you don’t want to spend the time to completely customize your system just don’t use an Arch based system. Seriously. Arch has some neat things about it, but it’s not the magical be all and end all of distros. If you don’t want to use what it’s good at use Mint, or Debian, or PopOS, or Ubuntu, or Fedora, or if you want something bleeding edge use OpenSuse Tumbleweed. You don’t have to use shitty imitation Arch if you don’t want to use Arch. You also don’t need experience with Manjaro to use Arch. I jumped straight into Arch after using Mint for years and it was fine. I still use Mint on my laptop and as a backup on my old drive I moved to my new computer just in case I do something stupid in Arch. Mint is great. I just like playing around with completely customizing my system. Why would you want something Arch based if you don’t care about the main thing it’s actually good at?
To answer your question: AUR. Aur is something that I love about Arch.
Also please stop gatekeeping. Installing Arch by hand instead of using something like EndevaourOS doesn’t mean anything. I used EndevaourOS after using arch simply because it was way faster and easier to configure. It still has all the functionality of arch (since essentially it is arch).
If you don’t want to spend the time to completely customize your system just don’t use an Arch based system
Thats the thing. You can still customize everything and anything. I mean what’s stopping you from using a tty and changing things? Also even the installer helps you customize a lot of things…
I’m not gatekeeping. Arch isn’t fucking magical. Do whatever you want. I just actually don’t get it. What’s the point? I don’t even use the AUR. It’s not that good. It’s an inconsistent mess of janky conflicting build scripts and trust me bro binaries, and you can get basically anything there in almost any distro nowadays. Hell, most of it’s on Flathub. You can also customize anything you want on any distro. Arch is just the easiest one to start from a very minimal system and build something up that’s totally yours. Why use a distro that only takes that away and adds nothing?
I agree Arch isn’t magical. And I’m more than aware of the issues with the AUR, however i disagree that everything on there can be found by other means. There are several programs (such as optimus-manager for nvidia and integrated video card laptops) which are pretty much only found on the AUR (Not counting Github). Again this is about ease-of-use (Since you could build my example from github as well).
Obviously you can customize anything anywhere, what sets Arch apart is pacman and aur. And again in the case of Manjaro and EndeavourOS these and the wiki are the main “selling points”.
Arch is just the easiest one to start from a very minimal system and build something up that’s totally yours
Minimal ubuntu and fedora exists as well. And if you were to customise them you’d end up with something that you like as well. But i see what you are saying and i agree.
There are several programs (such as optimus-manager for nvidia and integrated video card laptops) which are pretty much only found on the AUR
As a person who uses Davinci Resolve, I can safely say that the AUR version is probably the easiest way to get it on a non-CentOS/RHEL distro. The AUR is still one of the biggest draws to Arch for me.
There are certainly still a few edge cases where the AUR is the least shitty option, and if those apply to you then go for it, but my experience has always been that the more I use it, the worse my experience gets, and everything I need has had better options for a while now, and those edge cases where it even makes sense are rapidly dwindling. But yes, I was exaggerating how bad it is. There are still more than just a few uses for it. EndeavorOS is maybe okay if you want that without having to install Arch, but Manjaro messes with things enough that it’s not as compatible with the AUR as it likes to pretend to be.
And yeah, I agree, there are lots of ways to build up your own system. You can do it with any distro if you’re determined enough, and there are other decent options besides just Arch. I just find Arch to be the easiest one to do it with, and I like easy. It’s maybe counter-intuitive to say, but I like Arch specifically because it makes the things I want to do easier than any other distro does.
I used to use it. I updated and twice on mobile, twice on desktop, it broke my OS. I wouldn’t touch it again.
Mint is great. Your specification is quite restrictive and will potentially open you up to suffering. Mint doesn’t use snaps so not sure why you’d want to avoid.
It’s like EndeavourOS but with more issues I guess. Oh and green instead of purple.
I’ve distro-hopped quite a bit. I used Manjaro for about 4-5 months. I really liked it actually. I did end up having some problems after an update, and even with some community help, I wasn’t able to fix it. After that, I decided to try Arch and ended up loving and using it for the past 5 or so years.
If you’re new to Linux and insist on using an Arch based distro, Manjaro is probably a good choice for you, but if you have used Linux for a while and are comfortable with system configuration, I really couldn’t recommend Arch enough.
Both communities are very well established and responsive, but Arch is on its own level. The Arch wiki is really an amazing thing, and aside from some gatekeepers, the majority of the Arch community is happy to help.
I know you said that you don’t want to be doing “crazy power user stuff” all the time, but really once you get everything set up the way you like it (it took me maybe 2-3 hours after installation), you can basically leave configuration and use it just like Manjaro and have – in my experience – a more stable system.
Up to you, but you seem like you might be comfortable in Linux already, so I’d recommend just going for Arch.
Does Arch have drive encryption integrated? Or do you have to use LUKS like manjaro and decrypt the drive before booting into it?
What distros are there that have drive encryption but don’t require decrypting the drive while booting? Isn’t LUKS pretty much the standard disk encryption for all Linux distributions?
I thought I heard of a Linux distro where your login password decrypts the drive like a Mac does
Nope, all manual. If Arch had something integrated then Manjaro would have it.
Fedora is nice, not based on Ubuntu, and it mostly “just works” out of the box. The only obnoxious part is having to manually install codecs to play videos.
Yeah fedora has some issues out of the box, when I first installed it most videos failed to load, including youtube. Only to realize 30 minutes later that the issue was missing codecs… they also modified firefox to not install h264. The repo’s are also quite limited due to their extreme stance on OSS.
These issues are easily solveable at least: codecs, h264 and for the repo’s ticking the rpmfusion toggle boxes in gnome-software.
Other than that I’m very happy with it, I just wish it wouldn’t be so pedantic out of the box as it just pushes beginners away.
I installed Manjaro for many people and have thoroughly regretted it, using it was a battle and over time the install would for seemingly no reason break.
I no longer give people manjaro, endeavor is significantly better. Or the arch installer.
I can’t even play a steam game for more than 15 minutes without the wifi button disappearing from existence and never return back
I used to run Manjaro, and I can’t recommend it for a new user. While the UX is user friendly, the distro itself is not. Ive very often had upgrade and update issues that i have wasted days fixing.
I’d instead recommend fedora workstation as a non-ubuntu option
Second Fedora workstation. Spent almost an entire year distro hopping to find a distro that worked out the box with my laptops touch screen. Fedora has been the one - super polished too!
I don’t know much about the console and such magic which probably makes me not exactly predestined for an Arch-based distro with the AUR where I feel like you can break more than in some more common ones like Mint. Despite that, I have been on Manjaro for years now, still learned only the very basics, but have not found a more stable distro that works so well out-of-the-box with some of the newer hardware I have (or had, it’s hardly new anymore). Also, I did in fact find the repos combined with careful use of the AUR to be satisfying.
I did distro-hop a lot especially in the beginning of my Linux adventure and was on Mint for a couple of years as well. And that’s what I generally recommend to the other non-tech-savvy folks around me as well: Just try a bunch of the top distros on Distrowatch for a couple of weeks. They all have their advantages and disadvantages but eventually you’ll figure out what it really is that you want from a distro and which ones work properly with your hardware – and you’ll learn about some fixes for common issues which helps the learning about Linux in general.
There are probably folks who know much more than me who can tell you if Manjaro is objectively better than its bad reputation but from my personal experience as a fellow Linux noob: I found it very stable, decently accessible and the KDE spin with its many themes absolutely beautiful.
