What is your unbiased opinion on Manjaro?
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?
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if you want an Arch based distro, Endeavour OS is more popular – Manjaro has had a few issues over the years
Just switched to EndeavourOS about a week ago from Manjaro and been liking it so far.
Biggest reason for the change was my manjaro install was getting cluttered, and moving over to a new distro ( taking all my previous knowledgement with it) has been a blessing.
Beforehand, my Manjaro install was EFI, whereas my Windows 11 drive ( yes I know) was UEFI so switching on boot was an issue. Now both are on UEFI and show up within Grub.
Endeavor OS has bluetooth turned off by default. Thought there was an issue but nope.
So from no issues with updating, even with AUR turned on.
I just like starting fresh and setting things up with all my previous knowledge.
thanks to the archinstall tool it's very easy to install arch the way you want to
it's much lighter than Manjaro and has been very stable for me
I have used it in the past for a few years. I don't think you should. Why?
If you just want something not-Ubuntu and easy to use, I tend to favor Fedora personally.
I agree completely.
As a sidenote: If somebody wants something easy-to-use that is arch-based I'd suggest EndevaourOS.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So you let one person define your opinion of an entire community and distro? Mmm okay.
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.
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).
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".
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.
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 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.
I used to love Manjaro. It looks gorgeous ( to my eye ). Sadly, I now see it as a bit of a low-quality mess with governance issues. Manjaro broke my system more than once. Although I did not believe it when I used Manjaro, getting off of it has shown me that I regularly had AUR compatibility problems as well.
These days, I would recommend EndevourOS over Manjaro. It is just as easy in practice, I have found it to be far more stable. Once installed, EndevourOS is 99.8% the same as a well configured vanilla Arch. It uses the Arch package repositories natively.
Even more than Manjaro, I used to love Pamac and graphical package management. Now I think Pamac is garbage. It has caused so many problems for me. I mostly use yay to manage packages now. A really great middle ground between GUI package management and yay or pacman is pacseek. You have to use yay to install it but, for the times I may have missed Pamac, it has been awesome.
I used manjaro for a long while before I distro hopped and I think it’s a fine distro. Never had any problems with it. People keep pointing to the couple of times when it had some certificate issues. I don’t think it’s very relevant, and I only had positive things to say while I was using it.
I think Manjaro is a bit of a mixed bag. A good distro in it self but their are issues. Arch is great and a big part of it is due to the AUR. When using the AUR you can easily get dependentie conflics if you use it on Manjaro.
Also some sloppy things from the devs. From adding broken patches (some driver thing). To exidentely ddosing the AUR.
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!
Wouldn't let it touch my system. Try Endeavor if you want to hop to an arch based distro.
May I ask why?
EndeavorOS was my first desktop distro and it's a great beginner distro in my opinion. Most stuff is sanely pre-configured and dealing with stuff like Nvidia drivers and Steam is one click away.
From what I heard, Manjaro is very unpolished. The devs do weird stuff with the OS and their decisions are questionable if I'm not wrong. I think Manjaro isn't as easy and stable as they advertised.
Regarding Endeavor OS, they say it is Manjaro done right.
Manjaro is very “polished” which is why many people that try it ( myself included ) love it and come to recommend it. Unfortunately, it is also low quality and poorly managed which is why many ex-users ( myself included ) would never use it again.
EndevourOS is Manjaro that works. It has no graphical package manager. You can install the one Manjaro uses easy but, sadly, it is unreliable and poor quality ( like Manjaro itself ).
What you hear is probably different from what it actually is like. There's a lot of Manjaro hate from people who've never actually used it as their daily driver and are just parroting what other people online are saying.
I've used Manjaro for a year before eventually moving to Endeavour and then Arch. It's perfectly fine.
Maybe it depends on what packages you use? I used Manjaro for ~2 years before switching to Arch and definitely had more update-related stability problems with Manjaro.
I have a Pine phone convergence edition that came with Manjaro Plasma. I installed it on my PC so I could easily dev for it. Updates twice broke the phone complaining about a login screen lock. On my PC, 2 updates broke it as it wouldn't start up the DE.
I have used Mint and Kububtu without issue but I don't like Snaps. I now use OpenSuse as a simple rolling distro.
You may have used without issue, but that is not the experience of others. Devs have complained about them distributing non-master branch features that weren't sufficiently tested or released and got their issue tracker flooded.
They are a really questionable distro quality wise. One of the worst IMHO, and considering they are aimed at new users, it's absolutely cruel to use them.
You may love it and great for you, but people won't give you free reign to advise a bad distro that is going to ruin Linux for newbies when there are better alternatives available.
Well, did you figure out what caused the issue? There's many things besides the quality of a distro that could cause this, especially on an Arch or Arch derivative. Many Arch users have complained about their DE occasionally failing to boot up due to some random update that broke something for their specific config. Just saying that this doesn't prove much. It could have been Manjaro, it could have easily also been a bad upstream update or even PEBKAC.
A few days ago, my standard Arch system upgraded to a version of pipewire-pulse that created duplicate audio devices on every audio profile change. I could have easily just said, "Arch is a shitty distro, they can't even get audio devices working correctly", but that would be misleading. Anecdotal statements like yours are too vague to prove a point about any distro.
This isn't an issue specific to Manjaro. This also happens to any upstream project that are shipped by downstream. Many distros ship unofficial patches to upstream software, this is NOT new.
I don't use it anymore as I am on regular Arch now, but during my time using Manjaro for about a year, I genuinely didn't see much issue with it, at least no more than what I've been experiencing with Arch. I am just annoyed at how some people had one or two bad experiences and then are just jumping on the hate bandwagon with nothing much to back it up.
You first insinuate people who bash it, don't use it, I've made it clear I did with clear examples. Now it's on to blaming the user or expecting users to invest hours and hours to troubleshoot borked installs. Breaking software isn't, and shouldn't be the norm. I've never had it with Mint or Kubuntu, and before you throw a point about it being rolling distros are more up to date, I've been using OpenSuse Tumbleweed for over a year without issue. It hasn't borked once. Failure rate on Manjaro is higher and when you dig into how they operate, there are clear reasons why.
It seems you were very lucky in your Manjaro days, and now because you somehow avoided getting run over crossing the motorway blindfolded, you think everyone's experience is like yours.
There isn't a hate bandwagon, and you don't need to defend their honour. They are not a sports team you cheer on. They are a software project, and need to improve. You defending poor work just enables it.
The fact you raised points, they were disputed and you moved on to separate points to fit in with the theme of "Manjaro good", you're coming across as a Manjaro shill.
You do realize that you're basically saying your anecdotal experience is better than mine right? So you're basically doing the same thing you're accusing me of, thinking that everyone's experience is like yours. All I asked was whether you actually figured out what the root cause was. From your vague response, I can only surmise you didn't do the least amount of debugging and decided to blame Manjaro just because. All the other distros you tested on weren't even Arch-based, so you don't even have a solid understanding of whether it was actually Manjaro or an Arch issue.
Seriously? I am not even using Manjaro anymore as per my post. Just because I am not blindly following the crowd and jumping on hate bandwagons whenever I see one doesn't make me a shill. Calm yourself.
I've used Arch, Manjaro, and Endeavour. For ease of use it's between Manjaro and Endeavour and I'd pick Endeavour. Arch is great too. When you're ready to go deeper, give it a shot.
If you want to divorce yourself from Ubuntu (and I think that's a good idea myself) you can always run Linux Mint Debian Edition. Since you're so new to Linux, I would stick with Linux Mint as your daily driver and take the time to really learn the command line, shell scripting, process control, and everything Unix-like. Get good with tools like awk, sed, grep, find, and learn about regex. Distro hopping won't help to really learn the ins and outs.
Also take time to learn tools like iptables/nftables, ip route, IP forwarding. There's so much you can learn without distro hopping. Once you become well versed in all things command line, then you can start searching for use case specific distro. I use Arch myself but it's not for the beginning user.
I'm not a fan for a few reasons, but they're all on my end.
I will say, though, that if you "don't have time to always be doing crazy power user stuff," an Arch based distro might not be what you're looking for. This is especially true of an Arch based distro that strays pretty far from the core distribution.
My suggestion would be to try Fedora or OpenSuse Tumbleweed instead. I'm a big Fedora fan, and it's honestly great - much better than Ubuntu IMHO. It's also easy to maintain and less prone to user-induced breakage than Arch distros.
If you're looking for something even more different, but still not prone to breakage, then you might try looking into an immutable distro. Silverblue, OpenSuse Aeon, blendOS, or VanillaOS are all nice places to start looking.
I agree with this
What is your biased opinion on having unbiased opinions?
You can't be unbiased.
really? Noooo!!!
It sucks.
I've never used Manjaro, but I've used Arch (I don't currently use it) enough to know where it went wrong. Basically, they're trying to make a snapshot based distro out of a distro that's not snapshot based, and they run into issues because of it. On Arch, if you have an issue, you revert and wait a couple days. On Manjaro, if you have an issue, you revert and then wait, a week? Two? Is there any reasonable assumption that the next snapshot is good? I don't think they have the manpower to ensure snapshots are high quality, so they're merely whatever existed at the time, perhaps with obvious issues fixed.
I currently use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, which is snapshot based by design, while also being a rolling release. The way OpenSUSE works is by having all snapshots go through openQA, which means all snapshots (near daily) go through an automated test suite. So if something breaks, they'll write a test and the next snapshot won't have that issue.
So my opinion is to go with something release based (e.g. Mint) or bleeding edge (e.g. Arch), but don't try to go somewhere in the middle unless you have a larger team. So either trust your user or your dev team, there shouldn't be a middle ground.
I've used Manjaro for ~2 years, then switched to Arch. Had fewer problems when updating Arch than Manjaro and installing stuff from AUR is working much better.
If you don't want to go through the Arch installation process (though it's quite easy now with archinstall), you may want to take a look at EndeavourOS. I haven't personally used it, but it has an easy installation like Manjaro and does not hold packages back
I used Arch for ~5 years on three different systems, so I'm pretty familiar with the installation process. My reason for leaving was two-fold:
I needed to switch from FreeBSD to Linux on my server because I wanted to run docker containers, so I decided to try something different. OpenSUSE was the only realistic option that offered a stable server distro and a solid rolling desktop distro, so I switched my server to Leap and a year or so later switched my desktop to Tumbleweed.
Tumbleweed solves the first issue as well by running BTRFS by default on root with snapper configured. I've done a few rollbacks in the 3-4 years I've used it, and it's way better than trying to fix an Arch system with pacman. I could get the same effect with Arch, but most users aren't going to consider BTRFS or ZFS on root with Arch (I had BTRFS on /home on Arch, but that didn't help much).
I think Arch is a fine distro and I certainly recommend using it to those it makes sense for. I also think EndeavorOS is a fine way to get into it, though I do recommend installing it once using the standard test based installer to mostly get familiar with the tools (I've had to chroot to fix Arch). However, it's not my first recommendation, and I instead recommend Mint to anyone asking. I love Tumbleweed, but I'm not going to recommend any rolling release distro to someone unfamiliar with Linux. Release based distros break very rarely, and if they do, it's usually at release upgrade where it's expected, so mitigation isn't as important.
Anyway, I think I'll stop rambling now. In short, don't use Manjaro, use either Arch or EndeavorOS if you want rolling, or a release based distro if you don't.
What about LVM snapshots? I assume everyone sets up LVM nowadays anyway.
I don't think I've heard of any distro doing that. Maybe it's more common in the server space, but LVM is usually only used for encryption and maybe RAID in the desktop space, and even RAID is pretty rare these days.
I personally have one large BTRFS partition for my desktop OS with sub volumes for a few mount points. I used to have /home on a separate partition, but I made / too small and needed to micromanage it, so I decided to just go with one partition on the next install.
I'm not familiar with how LVM snapshots work with BTRFS subvolumes, but I'm guessing it would just snapshot the whole partition. I use BTRFS for other reasons as well, so it just doesn't make much sense to me to do it differently, and why would I when Tumbleweed does it for me?
I do use LVM for encryption, but that's it.
I meant manually from the cli. I'm not aware of any GUI tools having support for the special LVM features either.
I'm not talking about GUI tools, I'm talking about package manager integration. On openSUSE, if I do a
zypper upgrade, it'll create a BTRFS snapshot so I don't need to think about it. It goes a step further and adds it to a few other commands too AFAIK, so there's a good chance that I'll have a recent snapshot for / if a configuration change broke something.If a popular distro automatically configures LVM snapshots, I'd expect more regular desktop users to be aware if it. AFAIK, none do, so it seems like something only server admins would know about.
This makes so much sense... I used Manjaro like 2 or 3 years ago and really loved it... Until it just died one day a couple months in. I spent a good amount of time troubleshooting and when I couldn't fix it I gave up on it.
Figured since Manjaro came so highly recommended, Linux and I just weren't enough on the same level yet and to give it some more time... But from reading all the comments in this thread, it sounds like I had the typical Manjaro experience.
Man, I kinda wish it wasn't as commonly recommended. Hell even I've recommended it as I had a really good experience with it before it died and I assumed that was my fault; after all, so many people recommend manjaro that it's more likely I alone was the problem, not the distro...
Yeah, and that's the problem. It's kind they gave all of the elitism of typical Arch users, but without the general stability to back it up. They try to make Arch more stable but holding back certain updates, but that just creates more problems because they don't have the manpower to actually test that combination of packages.
If you want a "stable" rolling release, use Tumbleweed, they have a decent team that prioritizes testing. If you want a super customized setup, use Arch (or Void). If you want Arch, but don't want to install it manually, use EndeavorOS. But don't use Manjaro, it can break in unexpected ways because of how they manage their package repository.
But if you're new to Linux, you should probably use Mint. It works really well out of the box, there are lots of flavors, and it'll be easy to find guides and support.
I've been using Garuda, another arch based distro, for several months now that have been smooth sailing. If I start tumbling into trouble town again though, I will heed your advice and switch to mint. :)
If you've never used it then it doesn't suck half as much as your opinion.
I used Arch for long enough (~5 years) to have seen plenty of people blame Arch for problems unique to Manjaro. I've also been following PinePhone development hoping to jump in once it stabilizes, and Manjaro is the distro with the most problems by far. Most of the problems Manjaro has, they create for themselves by trying to make Arch "more stable," whatever that's supposed to mean.
Use what you like, but I just do not feel comfortable recommending Manjaro to anyone. I'll continue to recommend Mint, Arch, OpenSUSE, and Void depending on what users are looking for.
He said it badly but his longer explanation was “I have never used it but I spent enough time ina closely linked community and heard enough horror stories to know that it sucks”. I mean, that seems fair actually.
I have several family members and friends on Manjaro for the last several years. I have had virtually no need to intervene with it on their behalf, and these are users with zero linux knowledge (one of them believes they have a Mac because I pimped the UI to look like OSX).
Despite the detractors, I think it's the least hassle distro I've encountered, and I've used Linux for 25 years.
It's like EndeavourOS but with more issues I guess. Oh and green instead of purple.
I've installed Arch, Arcos and Manjaro (from the Arch based distros). Manjaro and Arcos are faster and easier to install and setup compared to Arch. Manjaro has nice GUI to select kernel, GPU drivers and install software (and does not automatically move you to the newest kernel, as opposed to Arch or Arcos). They had fucked up (I think 3 times) with renewing their SSL certificate, and for a short while their ISOs were unverifiable (not that big of an issue if you ask me). Since they delay their packages' updates, running them in testing for a few months for extra stability, installing from AUR is bound to break.
I've installed Manjaro on 3 computers, and worked with it extensively for about 3 years. It's a decent distro that doesn't deserve all the hate it gets.
It's not reliable. They try to combine stable with unstable packages and it doesn't work. It's only a matter of time before your graphics get messed up and you boot into a terminal. Avoid.
Get Linux Mint. You'll thank me
Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit
I've used it on a couple of headless machines over the years primarily as a host for docker containers. It's been mostly great but those few times it has broken was really annoying. Nothing I couldn't fix and never needed to reinstall though.
That being said I'll be reconfiguring soon and I thinking about switching away and using Debian.
If you want something user friendly and something with good gui support, why not try out fedora or opensuse tumbleweed
My unbiased opinion is that for what it sets out to achieve (no hastle Arch Linux setup) there are better options. EndeavourOS is worth looking at. I'll leave it to others to list the drawbacks of Manjaro's package triaging approach. I'm still having my morning coffee in bed, so I'm typing this with one hand.
I've had more success with Manjaro than any other distro. I've gotten lots of software working because of the great package manager, all using a GUI. I think it's really easy to use and at the same time really flexible and powerful. I've tried to install Arch twice and failed both times. I guess I'm an idiot. Manjaro is easy to install and you get all the power a flexibility of Arch's package management.
They say that the arch-installer is a great way to install Arch. In case you give it a try again. It's bundled with the Arch Iso.
Was my first distro and used it for years without isses
Loved it
I ran Manjaro for a couple of years as my daily driver before moving on to EndeavourOS. At this point I've probably spent an equal amount of time on both distros.
Their holding back of arch packages might sound like a good idea, but in reality not so much. Most of the time the same oopsies slip through with a bit of delay. Other times being out of sync with AUR causes additional issues. Arch stable is already stable, so holding back is just extra work with no gain in my book. Any additional testing effort would be better spent on Arch testing instead of doing the same work with delay.
Opinions are always biased.
Is that your unbiased opinion about opinions?
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.
TBH, if you don't have bleeding edge hardware just stay with OPENSUSE Leap, Debian Stable, Linux Mint or LMDE. If you are feeling adventurous, even Slackware will cover your back most of the time and gives you more bragging rights than Arch. Even if you have bleeding edge hardware, you are better off with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora and Arch.
Manjaro is just not that stable. It once was the only way to install an Arch-ish system without having to go through the hassle of the official Arch installation guide, but currently there are several options to avoid this guide and still have a vanilla Arch system. That's how I used Manjaro for a brief period. The tools I remember they provide, or even better alternatives, are in the Arch User Repo (AUR) anyway, available for all Arch-like distro users. Maybe the only exception to this is the wide catalog of kernels that Manjaro provides, but an equally extensive catalog is available for Arch users through official and third-party repos and the AUR.
Manjaro is not quite exciting but also not quite stable. I think it's a distro most people get by accident.
Debian unstable best for gaming
Debian sid/unstable isn't even a real distro, it is just a staging area for testing. No care is taken to keep packages added to it compatible, that is literally where packages go to achieve that compatibility before they go to Debian testing and/or stable. It does not get security updates either.
You don't need security updates when you are using the latest version of a package. That's the security model that all rolling release distros use. Security comes from upstream development, from devs patching their software as soon as they find vulnerabilities. If this is more or less secure than the Debian Stable approach is up for your use case.
Packages with fixes are often in Debian Security before they are in unstable though because nobody cares about security fixes for unstable. They just update the packages there when they need a new version as part of their regular workflow. It is not like a rolling release distro.
I didn't say it was a rolling release distro. The security model of their packages is one of a rolling release distro but the distribution is unstable, not rolling. The thing I find plainly absurd is to ask a security repo from the unstable branch of a distro, or from a rolling release distro.
I don't know about security updates, but what you just described in the first sentences is literally the definition of an unstable release
No, unstable just means it isn't tested, not that people literally do not pay attention to version constraints when assembling a collection of packages.
Nope. Countless stories of updates breaking everything, developer incompetency (pamac, their GUI pacman wrapper, took the AUR down twice) and a lot more.
https://youtu.be/5KNK3e9ScPo (keep in mind that the treasury thing never happened)
For a more successful attempt at a stable rolling release, try openSUSE tumbleweed. For an arch based solution, try EndeavorOS or Garuda.
Fedora does do a point release model but not nearly as bad as Ubuntu's.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/5KNK3e9ScPo
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Not really an opinion but I guess an experience - Manjaro was my first ever Linux distro.
I switched to it around 4 years ago and everything seemed to work except that I had this issue where if a game was running for 30 minutes or longer, it would progressively run worse and worse until it either crashed or I would just restart it. Didn't really find any solution online, the issue didn't happen on windows so I just switched back after 2 weeks.
Half a year later I decided to give it another shot, but I had a completely different issue I couldn't figure out how to fix, so I switched away from it 3 days later to Mint. Switched back to Windows a day later because I wasn't much of a fan of apt when compared to pacman, and arch (what Manjaro is based on) is this mythical distro that's very hard to install and use, so I didn't bother.
Then another half a year later I switched to arch and stuck to it, with minor distro hopping here and there but always came back to arch. Thanks to Manjaro, I knew pacman commands and had overcome the fear of the terminal, which did make the switch to arch much easier.
That being said, my opinion is that you should at the very least try it. If the distro gives you no problems - fantastic, but if gives you major issues like in my case, then at least you get to familiarize yourself with arch-based distributions and maybe try EndeavourOS or Arch in the future.
Don't even bother with Manjaro tbh.
Manjaro is bullshit
That's not strong enough of an expletive.
I'm not a distro hopper, but 6 years ago I ditched Windows and chose Manjaro in the i3wm flavor.
I learned a lot initially and now "live in the terminal" whenever possible and I'm still using the same install.
If you want to learn more about linux, I can recommend it.
lDK if straight arch is better (as i've never used it) but I think I kinda prefer not having a constant flood of updates.
You are literally me.
Though after my introduction to Manjaro with i3, I switched to EndeavourOS with BSPWM.
@nul9o9 @s_s You switching to endeavourOS.. Manjaro is better than EndeavourOS. Your transition is bad...!
The only good think of that distro is their green color.
Its ok. The logo looks crap but it has everything I needed already installed where other distros required me to configure or set stuff up. I've had no manjaro related issues over the last 2 years and it's the only distro that hasn't come with an issue out of the box.
Pop os and mint are great I don't think they should be written off just because they're Ubuntu based. Fedora is solid, endeavor and Garuda are arch based and good as well. All the people saying arch requires no setup now that it has an installer are wrong. It will set you up with a barebones system and you'll have to customize from there which can be a hassle if you aren't familiar with linux.
I don't understand the hate. I have been using Manjaro as my sole OS on two machines (a Thinkpad with XFCE, a Surface with Gnome) for several years, and have never had any major problem. Everything just works. The same could be said of Mint (which I used to be on before Manjaro), but I enjoy having faster updates on Manjaro. So I guess, from experience, I am very happy with it.
The whole thing with holding back package updates for a some weeks doesn't make a ton of sense to me, especially given that to my understanding security updates are often held back as well. The main advantage over Arch is that it has a graphical installer, but IMO Arch really isn't that hard to install now with
archinstallbeing a thing.In another vein, they've let their website certificate expire on multiple occasions, and have shipped pamac versions that have ended up DDoSing the AUR on multiple occasions as well. All this hints at some fairly serious mismanagement and doesn't exactly lend itself to the implicit trust required of distro maintainers.
I did use Manjaro for a decent stretch before eventually switching to Arch, and functionally I didn't notice any difference after switching apart from the AUR manager I used and packages making their way to my system sooner. This is a big part of why I say I don't really see the point.
I like it a lot. It gives you the arch experience without the hassle of installing it.
I've been using Manjaro (XFCE edition) as my daily driver, both on a laptop and a desktop system for more than 6 years now. I've tried many others beforehand: Ubuntu and its variations, Arch, Fedora, Tumbleweed, ...
But Manjaro was what made me stop hopping around. While it's true that it has some pitfalls (e.g. cert issues, AUR incompatibility at times), to this day it's working well enough for me that I don't feel like switching away.
I'm not just browsing web on it either. Software engineering, music production, image and video processing, etc.
Then again, I don't consider myself a beginner at this point and can troubleshoot a fair amount of issues now that I simply couldn't when I started using Linux more than a decade ago.
I also try to:
I also always appreciated the fact that I could get away with not doing a system update for like six weeks and then do a big one (as mentioned, in combination with reading their update announcement). That's always something that didn't quite work for me on Arch in the past (then again, I still was a beginner back then, so most "reinstall to solve this problem" situations back then were on me).
What if Manjaro really would get worse enough so I'd want to switch? I guess EndeavourOS would be an option, because it's very close to Arch, but at the same time, it seemingly offers a graphical installer that hopefully will set itself up properly on a laptop. Then again, I haven't installed Arch in quite a while now. Maybe the install experience has gotten much nicer.
I had more trouble in a few month of Manjaro on a secondary system than I had with Arch in over 15 years. The amount of conflicts I had to resolve during package updates was crazy. If I now want to set up a new system, I use EndeavorOS as a base. Quick install procedure but I end up with something very close to Arch.
Seconding EndeavourOS as an alternative, I used to use Manjaro and eventually the dependency conflicts (because every non-AUR package is about 2-weeks out-of-date) drove me insane enough to switch to Endeavour. I haven't had a problem with the exception of a broken grub update last year, which AFAIK wasn't just an EndeavourOS problem and they've since taken action to prevent something like that from occurring again.
I used to use it on my laptop and found it to be stable and solid. I never encountered any of the theoretical issues people brandish about. The GUI app store was really good (pamac) and frankly if it was included with EndeavourOS it would be perfect and I could recommend EOS to anyone; without the GUI app store EOS really are intentionally limiting how popular they could be. The default wallpapers were a little bland.
I switched to endeavour as when wanting to move away from Ubuntu on my desktop Manjaro didn't like my multi monitor setup (and nor did anything else I tried other than EndeavourOS and Ubuntu). If that had worked I might still be using it now.
I would also like a GUI installer on EOS but I no longer like pamac.
You can install pamac on EOS no problem as it is in the AUR and yay is installed by default in EOS. So, it is just yay -S pamac-gtk
But, please do not install pamac on EOS.
A really great alternative is pacseek. It offers a text user interface ( TUI ). Give it a shot.
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.
A friend recommended it to mee because Ubuntu packages were hard to edit/create and the versions were always out of date. So I used XFCE and later the KDE edition and had no really big issues (since the forum if something broke always had a workaround). Ngl there were some stupid issues like 3 times (Nvidia GPU user yay!) but other than that the Desktop Experience, Windows Dual Boot, Gaming, Custom packages in minutes were perfect. Pacman is just a beast so I recommend any distro that ships with that.
(This is from the perspective of a Desktop user)
I’ve been running it for a few years. I’ve learned the hard way to not use the AUR. Manjaro breaks AUR software installs with its delayed release schedule. I’m running it now with pretty much all flatpaks and it’s MUCH more stable. So if you do run it, stay away from native AUR and opt for flatpaks instead.
The next time it breaks I’ll finally get motivated, nuke the drive, and install arch again (I liked arch better).
I think I have the skills now to keep an arch box alive, if you don’t have those skills then manjaro won’t really solve that problem either imo. Just go mint or something similar.
By far the number one reason to use Arch or an Arch derivative is the AUR. Saying that you have learned the hard way not to use the AUR on Manjaro is saying that Manjaro is not delivering on its promises. I agree with you btw, using the AUR on Manjaro is not safe as Manjaro packages are out of sync with Arch and the AUR was designed for Arch packages.
EndevourOS provides most of the same advantages as Manjaro but is 100% AUR compatible as ( one installed ) EndevourOS is really just Arch.
If you do not like command-line package management, check out pacseek.
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
otherwise why change whats running for you?
My advice, pick a base distribution, and build what you want. Mostly when picking different distros all you are really picking is a package manager, default applications, and a desktop.
If you want to advance in your Linux knowledge building your own will help you quite a bit in learning how it works at the core and what peices are needed to run a system. Then when something breaks you have the understanding to fix or at least properly ask for help. I would especially say this is true if you are looking to switch to arch as your base distribution.
I would only recommend Manjaro to a new person trying to dip their toes into arch but not for their daily driver.
It's mostly fine but has had enough issues over the years I stopped using it for my "I want arch but I'm lazy" distro. Arch itself is really not hard to install these days but if you find it too intimidating endeavor is basically just arch anyway but with an installer.
Speaking of arch-installer there is an install script included with arch that can get you to the graphical desktop of your choice with little input. I used it for my current install and it was very easy.
That's what I was referring to. I don't use it because I have a list of packages I install in a file but the one time I did it was very easy.
Oh, I thought you were talking about EndeavourOS.
I was forced to switch from manjaro to fedora at work a year ago (we were forced to pick between Ubuntu or Fedora) and I miss it. Things break more often on fedora, I now even lag 1 release behind so that I don't have to deal with breaking updates. I didn't have any problems with manjaro. Still use it at home
Curious to know what was broken on Fedora. My experience with Fedora has been very stable.
You have been using Fedora raw hide? On the latest stable Fedora releases thing break significantly less often than on Manjaro.
@wiz
@MagneticFusion
What kind of breakage did you encounter?
Most common are probably issues with login screen, e.g. not updating it, not showing login field input. I use x11+kde, same as it was on manjaro
I used Manjaro on raspberry pi and it worked well however i personally havent used Manjsro in years i still wouldnt use it though because its arch and i prefer simpler distros when i first started using Linux it was Linux Mint, then Kubuntu, then Zorin, then Fedora and now OpenSuSe Tumbleweed im happy with that distro and dont want to change it
Never had manjaro running smoothly over a longer periode of time. Sth broke every time i tested.
The themes are awesome
I knew I'd find this comment somewhere.
You have to manually install new kernel branches with
manjaro-settings-managerJust using pacman isn't enough. There is no
linux-latestpackage like in arch.It's ok, if you're willing to read the Forum once in a while and inform yourself before applying upgrades.
it would be better as an arch installer and a couple of extra packages - not completely different repos
All opinions are biased and I don't like Manjaro!
I've used Manjaro it went and died on me so now I just run arch
I used Ubuntu for a month. Switched to Manjaro for 9 months, then went to Artix Linux where I've been for 2 years.
Manjaro has quite a few issues which I think are addressed by EndeavorOS, which would be my personal recommendation.
A rolling release distro does require a bit more attention, however, as you should be updating your system more regularly and you'll occassionally run into dependency issues depending on how many packages you install.
This usually requires being a bit familiar with the command line and how to properly search internet resources to find answers to specific bugs. The Arch Wiki is an incredible resource about computers in general and worth looking into for pretty much anyone imho.
You'll want to also look into using the AUR, as eventually you'll find that you'll want/need a piece of software that isn't in the official repositories.
I have other thoughts, but these are the most objective ones:
Compared to Fedora and EndeavorOS:
I haven't used Manjaro in years so my experiences are not up to date, but from my experiences it always felt unpolished and somewhat amateurish compared to other distributions, especially compared to Arch.
I've made Arch crash many times but part of their ideology is that Arch "is as stable as your are". So when I made Arch crash it always felt like a fault of my own.
Manjaro, however, that has marketed itself as a new user friendly distro borked itself after updates just as often as Arch. Back in the day at least. For a newbie oriented distro I don't think this is excusable.
Then Manjaro has done some really weird choices over the years, like with them shipping a proprietary office suite. As well as them not renewing their SSL certs in time for their forum. Several times...
Still, I don't like the idea of point release operating systems so I've always kept to rolling release systems, and if you want a solid rolling release then I have to recommend OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Haven't crashed even once in the 5+ years I've been using it on several PC's and servers (in the form of MicroOS).
manjaro is my backup os for my primary endeavourOS, and it has never failed me in the last 5 years. one time there was an issue with manjaro lagging behind aur which was solved a few days later and wasn't a big deal. the only reason is not my primary is bc I just like endeavourOS a tad more
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.
It's aight. I like having access to the AUR and Pacman through a nice UI but easy to shoot yourself in the foot if you aren't careful.
The GNOME spin is really good imo. use it on my gaming laptop. Might go to Pop when it gets CosmicDE tho
I run linux on my gaming rig. I've had the best luck with performance of graphics cards with manjaro and pop. I am not a huge fan of gnome and prefer kde (FWIW, gnome works fine, I just prefer the feel of kde).
With the above in mind, I really like the newness of the packages on rolling distros like Manjaro/arch. Yes, it can break things but Manjaro tends to be a bit behind Arch on releases -- maybe this helps? The AUR is awesome. I also like several of the gui tools Manjaro has implemented to make graphics driver installs simpler.
Pop worked really well and was simplier for gaming -- especially on devices with hybrid graphics.
That being said, I haven't used Mint since the forums were hacked. I haven't used Ubuntu since they started devaluing their users (integrated Amazon?, forcing snap?). Fedora is nice but I found pop/manjaro better for gaming due to graphics support.
My advice to you -- what you are asking is one of the main benefits of linux -- personal choice.
So... get out your USB stick and try them. Use the forums to help you with the nuances and make each work for your needs. Then see what you prefer. Then donate to that project and its base project.
It's awesome to have choice.
Flawless on my thinkpad T480, occasionaly some issues on my gaming PC usually nvidia drivers post update but not as much lately
Its ok, but the Arch repos are very limited limited and I can't recommend using AUR much.
Better try Fedora.
Really? Which packages are you actually missing in Arch? I like Fedora and used it extensively in the past, but it has always devolved into a wild mess of COPR repos. I haven't had the same issue with Arch and I use the AUR very sparingly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions#Package_management_and_installation
Has an overview. Debian's binary package repository has more than ten times more packages, and Fedora more than five times.
I have been using Manjaro in the past and the lack of available binary packages from the trusted main repo was often a problem.
Since switching to Fedora I only very rarely encounter missing packages and have not once used COPR (but I do use Flatpack on the desktop).
No, I am asking the packages that you personally are missing. I don't think raw package counts are the way to determine whether one distro is offering more software than another. Arch frequently will bundle software in a bigger packages while other distros will split them up into sub-packages, artificially inflating the count.
Tbh I've experienced the exact opposite of what you experienced, but it may just be down to our individual software needs. For example, Discord, Signal, and Yuzu are nowhere to be found in the Fedora repos, whereas they're available in the main Arch repos. Likewise, things like codec support often require RPMFusion, but in Arch it's just available right out of the gate.
I don't remember which ones exactly I was missing, but it was a very common occurrence that I had to work around with appimages or flatpacks (or AUR, but that caused dependency hell all the time).
RPMfusion is a one time addition on system installation and the rest is available via Flathub, which is significantly better integrated in Fedora than Manjaro/Arch.
But one that you have to manage with every new Fedora version. I've always had issues with RPMFusion packages not being ready in time for new Fedora releases or flat out causing conflicts with packages from the main Fedora repos.
That is just simply not true. As long as you have the
flatpakpackage installed, it works just like it does on Fedora.I get the feeling that maybe you just haven't tried Arch in a while, but perhaps a lot has changed since the last time you used it.
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 can't even play a steam game for more than 15 minutes without the wifi button disappearing from existence and never return back
Its Green.
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.
distro for noobs