4 ms·
Worth noting that Manjaro has had a somewhat tarnished reputation, which has been widely covered before but it's still worth mentioning.[1] I used to recommend
by jchw 3y ago
Worth noting that Manjaro has had a somewhat tarnished reputation, which has been widely covered before but it's still worth mentioning.[1]
I used to recommend Manjaro to people as an alternative to Arch that's a bit friendlier, but I stopped after trying to debug an issue and realizing that they have overcomplicated a lot of things (kernel management in particular bugs me in Manjaro.)
Arch now has some kind of installer, so I guess that's an improvement. Though, I really wish Valve could package something like SteamOS 3 for regular desktops. I'm aware of multiple projects that do similar things, but the execution on Deck is quite good. The "immutable" concept is certainly going to be an important part of Linux on desktops in the future, probably in different forms.
[1]: https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/ https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/
- jonas-w 3y agoRelated Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32503090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32503090
- 3np 3y agoEndeavourOS is a (so far, time will tell) more reliable and sane normie-friendly desktop Arch with installer. The Budgie DE is def worth checking out for F&F.
- pfych 3y agoI've been running an EndeavourOS setup for a few years now with almost zero hiccups. Great starting point.
- bradrn 3y agoCompletely agreed. I’ve been using EndeavourOS for half a year now, and it’s great. It’s almost the same as vanilla Arch, just with more packages installed by default and a few UX improvements.
- nafnlj 3y agoI switched from Manjaro to EndeavourOS last year after using Manjaro for two (Manjaro was my first experience with Linux as a daily driver) and agree with this fully. I much prefer using Arch's regular repositories to Manjaro's. But having used Manjaro as my first distribution (I shouldn't have been using an Arch-based distro, but that aside), I don't think EndeavourOS is a one-to-one normie replacement in all respects. While I don't need or want Manjaro's GUI tools now, Pamac and its GUI kernel/driver tools helped me make the adjustment from having only used Windows to Linux. I am sure I could have managed on EndeavourOS, but it would have been more difficult at the time.
- jorvi 3y agoThe true replacement for casual users is Pop_OS. For more mid-tier users I’d recommend installing base Arch once, then wiping and installing OpenSUSE. Using Arch without a bigger org managing it for you is kind of dangerous. Their policy is that they just wantonly push anything, and if there’s something wrong with a package they’ll tell you in the upgrade message. That you’ll have to manually evoke. And check for each package upgrade. I learned a lot from setting up Arch a couple of times, but ultimately I think they have a few policies that are terrible for the average user or even company.
- __rito__ 3y agoI use Pop_OS as my daily driver because of the existence of the NVIDIA version of the distro. I work in Deep Learning, and the NVIDIA version comes in really handy. I never face NVIDIA issues like my peers frequently complain.
- agumonkey 3y agoI pop endeavouros cassini nova on most machine now (xfce), never gets in the way.. I used to roll with mint xfce but I needed an arch base.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoCachyOS is another great Arch distro worth checking out, being AVX2-optimized similar to Intel's Clear Linux or Gentoo, but otherwise basically being EndeavorOS.
- pdimitar 3y agoSadly the home Wiki page of CachyOS does not sell it well for me. I appreciate we're given more options for a filesystem on install but beyond that I'm not sure what's so different. Special optimizations? How? Compile the world like Gentoo so as to use every single instruction of your CPU? Cool, I can actually stand behind that and install the OS because of it. But what does "a hardened Linux kernel" mean? I feel that that page expects you to know a lot about CachyOS already and I found myself impatiently closing the browser tab when I was about 50% in. Are there better introduction articles?
- brucethemoose2 3y agoYeah, the website feels like a placeholder... The wiki, git and Discord/Matrix chat are better: https://wiki.cachyos.org/ https://wiki.cachyos.org/ https://github.com/CachyOS https://github.com/CachyOS Basically they package many kernels with different schedulers, hardening and such to choose from. I believe hardened linux may even be a vanilla Arch kernel? And its not like Gentoo, they run their own repos like Clear Linux or ALHP were everything is basically built for Haswell and up (and very soon AVX512 CPUs like rocket lake/zen4). But unlike Manjaro, the vanilla Arch repos are also used, and are the system target. Other than that... Its more or less an Arch installer, like EndeavorOS. Perhaps that is why it doesn't need an introduction, because beyond some qol it is Arch Linux. Thats kinda the point.
- andai 3y agoApparently it uses this in the kernel, which optimizes scheduling for responsiveness: https://github.com/firelzrd/bore-scheduler https://github.com/firelzrd/bore-scheduler
- snowram 3y agoI am tired of seeing this website linked everywhere. People are posting it like a Pavlovian reflex any time Manjaro is mentioned in order to cancel the distribution, even if the criticism is very mild in my eyes. It is merely fuel for the distro war, which is a big deterrent for newcomers.
- kop316 3y agoYep: https://twitter.com/ManjaroLinux/status/1635741158700642304 https://twitter.com/ManjaroLinux/status/1635741158700642304
- pmarreck 3y ago> The "immutable" concept Which is both good, and actually sane. NixOS: Exists. (And runs great after I moved from Arch 1.5 years ago!)
- jchw 3y agoIndeed, I am running NixOS on five different devices. It's quite a time and effort investment, but I feel like once NixOS "clicks" for you, it ruins most other operating systems, which just feel like they're missing something now. I still generally recommend Arch to people (although hearing what people are saying, I'll probably start recommending EndeavorOS instead) because I think most people are barely able to make the Linux commitment in ideal conditions, much less the NixOS commitment.
- pmarreck 3y ago> It's quite a time and effort investment, but I feel like once NixOS "clicks" for you, it ruins most other operating systems, which just feel like they're missing something now. I found this to be 100% correct. You feel like you won’t ever need to distro-hop again, right? Like this is the penultimate Linux distro? Right?
- rgoulter 3y agoTo be clear: 'penultimate' means 'next to last', whereas 'ultimate' means 'last'. Since NixOS's rough edges can be quite rough, perhaps 'penultimate' may be more apt. (I mean, when NixOS works well, then it is amazing; but if you hit some use case where NixOS is difficult to use, then it requires more effort/understanding to get through).
- Aerbil313 3y agoI’m gonna start using NixOS as my daily driver in a short time, may I ask whether you can pinpoint me to that part which needs to click? Is it learning Nix/being able to write derivations? (also learning resources etc.)
- 3y ago
- hackerbrother 3y agoFew people choose Manjaro over DragonFly BSD and the mighty HAMMER filesystem!
- hedora 3y agoI'm seriously considering switching to a BSD. Do any of them support steam and zoom? Surely, hammer is fast enough to render retro indie games at 60fps. :-)
- chaxor 3y agoWhy not just use base Arch? It seems kind of silly to try anything else when the options are laid out very easily in front of you in the base installer.
- beebeepka 3y agoArch is too much work. I know it doesn't look like it to people who love to fiddle, but it's true. I don't want to babysit my computers. My wife would also not be amused
- jagaerglad 3y agoI don't like to fiddle with my computer too much, I just installed arch with KDE using their installer and kind of forgot about it for many months and it just worked™ (until I broke it myself in a way any distro would have broken, but that's a different story). The only thing with arch that is blocking a non-techy/fiddle-unfriendly person is the installation process (even with the script, knowing what a DE is, making a conscious decision which to choose, KDE etc)
- hutzlibu 3y ago"The only thing with arch that is blocking a non-techy/fiddle-unfriendly person is the installation process " I think your definition of "non-techy/fiddle-unfriendly" is quite different from the rest of the population. Also note, that just because you happened to had months of no problems, that does not mean it will be the same experience for someone else. Speaking of it: for a non-techy person, using the terminal is already a problem.
- xinayder 3y agoIt used to be like that before, but now there's this archinstall script which works wonders. You can select what DE to install, extra packages, setup your locale, keyboard, etc. It's much easier than it was before.
- andai 3y ago>My wife would also not be amused What OS is she using now? As a young teenager I got the bright idea to get my mother using Linux. Later I bought her a Mac and she was much happier. Wish I'd thought of that sooner. (I have no particular attachment to any OS (hate them all equally ;), it's mostly a matter of what you're used to, and picking the right tool for the job.)
- whimsicalism 3y agoWow frankly I do not think the failure to renew an archived forums cert is as big of a deal as this article makes it out to be
- boomboomsubban 3y agoThey only make it out to be a big deal as they've let more important certs expire four other times. Though that certificate wasn't important, it shows they still haven't properly addressed one of their long term problems.
- qwerty456127 3y agoThe problem with Arch is not with the installer. Installing it actually is pretty straightforward thanks to their Wiki (although it may seem intimidating to those who never actually tried reading it). The problem (also a key feature) is they apparently ship totally untested packages immediately as upstream releases (so updates often break something) while Manjaro does some reasonable testing and fitting (so updates almost never break anything) while still managing to ship reasonably fresh. Most of the the other distros ship ancient versions of everything. So to me Manjaro feels the golden point between radically fresh (Arch) and obsolete (others).
- 3np 3y ago> updates often break something Approx how many times have you observed this in practice over, say, the past 2~5 years?
- qwerty456127 3y agoI used Arch in 2010-2012 (when I was very new to Linux yet had no problem installing Arch thanks to the Wiki) and something broke a number of times (maybe like 3 times a year). It also felt surprisingly slower than Ubuntu despite using XFCE vs Gnome2. I then switched to Ubuntu and then to Manjaro and had only one break (it just wouldn't boot, but I easily found instructions on how to fix that) in many years straight. I don't say Arch is bad but to me it seems like it is rather far from perfect while Manjaro is the closest to perfect I have ever seen. Needless to say I appreciate Arch exists and am very grateful for the amazing job they do. Obviously no Manjaro would exist without Arch in the first place. Arch Wiki deserves a separate mention as it is of great quality and often helps a lot no matter what actual distro are you tweaking (it helped me with Ubuntu).
- 3np 3y agoArch has matured since 2012. I think you'd have a very different experience today.
- 3y ago
- antifa 3y agoHave you tried https://garudalinux.org/ https://garudalinux.org/ ?