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submitted 1 year ago by MagneticFusion@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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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[-] KillSwitch10@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Artopal@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

It's ok, if you're willing to read the Forum once in a while and inform yourself before applying upgrades.

[-] sebsch@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

Never had manjaro running smoothly over a longer periode of time. Sth broke every time i tested.

The themes are awesome

[-] s_s@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

I knew I'd find this comment somewhere.

You have to manually install new kernel branches with manjaro-settings-manager

Just using pacman isn't enough. There is no linux-latest package like in arch.

[-] Gush@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I can't even play a steam game for more than 15 minutes without the wifi button disappearing from existence and never return back

[-] Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

As Chris Titus once said “why install Manjaro when you can install arch" I used to daily manjaro but stuff broke and if you do decide to use manjaro don't use the AUR if you don't know what your doing

[-] Whisper06@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Defaced@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] humdrumgentleman@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I have other thoughts, but these are the most objective ones:

  • The theme was integrated with all applications I tried and I didn't spot any problems with it. (I'd tell you I liked it, but that would be subjective)
  • Installing via Pamac required knowing what source (repos, AUR, et cetera) you were installing from or to try multiple.
  • My Brother wifi printer couldn't connect and I didn't find a guide to resolve it.
  • I couldn't get audio to work correctly on my Thinkpad X1 Carbon 9th Gen.
  • The forums seemed to be active.
  • I ran it for a week in a VM without breaking anything. Didn't run for any length of time on bare metal due to the printer and sound issues.

Compared to Fedora and EndeavorOS:

  • Default GNOME theming, of course also through.
  • GNOME Store will show you all available sources when you search for the package on Fedora. For EndeavorOS I have to search two places on archlinux.org and flathub.
  • My printer worked with Fedora out of the box. For EndeavorOS I found a detailed guide they put together.
  • No audio issues on either.
  • Fedora also has a large forum. The EndeavorOS forum seems to have fewer users.
  • I ran Fedora on my laptop for 6 months. When I upgraded between versions, I ended up with two versions of some applications like "Terminal" and "GNOME Terminal," which was confusing. No breakages.
  • I've been running EndeavorOS for 14 months. I broke GRUB when everyone else on Arch and EndeavorOS did. I still had the live USB, and EndeavorOS provided instructions on how to fix it, although it was written for Ext4 and I had to make some educated guesses since I use BTRFS. I was successful and that was my only breakage.
[-] LinusWorks4Mo@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

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

[-] GunnarGrop@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

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).

[-] Teritz@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago
[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

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

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

Its ok, but the Arch repos are very limited limited and I can't recommend using AUR much.

Better try Fedora.

[-] Molecular0079@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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).

[-] Molecular0079@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

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.

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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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