this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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What is your unbiased opinion on Manjaro? (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by MagneticFusion@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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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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[–] Alex@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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'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

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

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:

  • breakage, while infrequent, is annoying, and reverting isn't straightforward
  • I wanted to run the same tools on my desktop as my server, and I didn't trust want to ruin Arch on my server

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.