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...and it's not even just the controversies. Manjaro feels like they play fast and loose with everything. Arch doesn't include AUR helpers by default specifical

...and it's not even just the controversies. Manjaro feels like they play fast and loose with everything. Arch doesn't include AUR helpers by default specifically because of the potential for user-generated packages to install malware or do something damaging (with the intent being that if you want to use the AUR you really ought to understand the implications). Manjaro not only includes AUR helpers--it seems to actively encourage its use for packages not officially maintained. Though, in their defense, their wiki page does (finally?) include fair warnings borrowed from Arch[1]. I'm just not sure it shares the same visibility. Otherwise it feels like a parasitic project masquerading as "Arch but easier." While there is truth to the latter, the oddly curious aspect to me--having been helping newbie Linux users for a couple years now--is that it seems new users generally have more long-term problems with Manjaro than they do with Arch. I don't have any facts to back this up, but speaking from my own anecdotes one would think the "easier" distro wouldn't be subject to this sort of trouble. Also, they recently lost all of their support forum images earlier this month[2]. [1] https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository [2] https://linuxreviews.org/Manjaro_Linux_Lost_All_Of_Their_Support_Forum_Images https://linuxreviews.org/Manjaro_Linux_Lost_All_Of_Their_Sup...

shrimp_emoji 6y ago
Unfortunately, the only other easy distro is Ubuntu, and not having the AUR or the Arch wiki or the quite good Manjaro forums and having to use potentially-dead PPAs for things because Ubuntu packages are out of date is less easy.
- Zancarius 6y ago
  I do agree that "easy" isn't a solved space in the Linux world (Pop!_OS by System 76 is supposed to be quite good albeit also Ubuntu-based). I don't think that necessarily absolves problems with the AUR or including AUR helpers out of the box. I do understand that the AUR is incredibly useful for a wide(r?) array of software, but I take issue with Manjaro's approach of foisting it on potentially unsuspecting users who may not know enough to understand that these are user-maintained packages that anyone could upload. I'd say I don't think it's a particularly responsible thing to do, but Manjaro's approach seems to eschew caution, throwing it entirely to the wind. But, I confess it could be because I'm a long time Arch user protecting the status quo. I understand that the traditional approach (install base-devel, copy the target PKGBUILD, run makepkg, run pacman -U) is an obstacle to a lot of users. That said, I think it's a good thing because the community repo has a ton of commonly used software (maintained by TUs) so there isn't a huge requirement on diving into the AUR now as there was 5 years ago. My fear is that encouraging people to blindly install PKGBUILDs via yay or pamac will eventually nail someone.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  The OpenSUSE distros--Leap and Tumbleweed--don't get a lot of attention but they're worthy, relatively easy to use, alternatives to Ubuntu and Arch respectively. Leap is an LTS distro that is more up to date than Ubuntu LTS and Tumbleweed is a rolling release that has enough QA that it doesn't blow up as frequently as Arch.
  - COGlory 6y ago
    I just installed OpenSUSE on 7 computers over the last month. On my personal ones, I was previously running Kubuntu, then Manjaro, and now OpenSUSE. On work ones, most were on CentOS 7. I installed Tumbleweed on the personal ones, including a laptop, and Leap on the work ones. Overall my experience has been great and I love OpenSUSE. However, I definitely would not recommend them for beginners for a few reasons. Tumbleweed doesn't support certain browser video out of the box in Firefox. I had to enable a repository, and download libav packages to get it to work. The package names were confusing (why do I need libav 56 and 57 when 58 is already installed?). I had already installed the packages from the default repo, but they specifically needed to be installed from Packman. GUI scaling between different displays is completely broken on Leap. Certain things scale, other things don't, and it looks horrible. Normally, I get super annoyed when people take little things like that and make a huge issue out of them. They are little problems and I solved both of them, and love OPENS USE. But with Manjaro, I didn't have any problems from fresh install. Even switchable laptop graphics worked. Manjaro is very easy to recommend to someone afraid to open a terminal.

shrimp_emoji 6y ago

Unfortunately, the only other easy distro is Ubuntu, and not having the AUR or the Arch wiki or the quite good Manjaro forums and having to use potentially-dead PPAs for things because Ubuntu packages are out of date is less easy.

Zancarius 6y ago
I do agree that "easy" isn't a solved space in the Linux world (Pop!_OS by System 76 is supposed to be quite good albeit also Ubuntu-based). I don't think that necessarily absolves problems with the AUR or including AUR helpers out of the box. I do understand that the AUR is incredibly useful for a wide(r?) array of software, but I take issue with Manjaro's approach of foisting it on potentially unsuspecting users who may not know enough to understand that these are user-maintained packages that anyone could upload. I'd say I don't think it's a particularly responsible thing to do, but Manjaro's approach seems to eschew caution, throwing it entirely to the wind. But, I confess it could be because I'm a long time Arch user protecting the status quo. I understand that the traditional approach (install base-devel, copy the target PKGBUILD, run makepkg, run pacman -U) is an obstacle to a lot of users. That said, I think it's a good thing because the community repo has a ton of commonly used software (maintained by TUs) so there isn't a huge requirement on diving into the AUR now as there was 5 years ago. My fear is that encouraging people to blindly install PKGBUILDs via yay or pamac will eventually nail someone.
bleepblorp 6y ago
The OpenSUSE distros--Leap and Tumbleweed--don't get a lot of attention but they're worthy, relatively easy to use, alternatives to Ubuntu and Arch respectively. Leap is an LTS distro that is more up to date than Ubuntu LTS and Tumbleweed is a rolling release that has enough QA that it doesn't blow up as frequently as Arch.
- COGlory 6y ago
  I just installed OpenSUSE on 7 computers over the last month. On my personal ones, I was previously running Kubuntu, then Manjaro, and now OpenSUSE. On work ones, most were on CentOS 7. I installed Tumbleweed on the personal ones, including a laptop, and Leap on the work ones. Overall my experience has been great and I love OpenSUSE. However, I definitely would not recommend them for beginners for a few reasons. Tumbleweed doesn't support certain browser video out of the box in Firefox. I had to enable a repository, and download libav packages to get it to work. The package names were confusing (why do I need libav 56 and 57 when 58 is already installed?). I had already installed the packages from the default repo, but they specifically needed to be installed from Packman. GUI scaling between different displays is completely broken on Leap. Certain things scale, other things don't, and it looks horrible. Normally, I get super annoyed when people take little things like that and make a huge issue out of them. They are little problems and I solved both of them, and love OPENS USE. But with Manjaro, I didn't have any problems from fresh install. Even switchable laptop graphics worked. Manjaro is very easy to recommend to someone afraid to open a terminal.