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I really think that Arch is vastly preferable. Manjaro is highly oppinionated and does a lot of "weird" things. Having their own package repository, while offer

I really think that Arch is vastly preferable. Manjaro is highly oppinionated and does a lot of "weird" things. Having their own package repository, while offering the AUR isn't a great idea, neither is trying to ship a non-free office by default. In my experience it is significantly less stable and using an Arch based distro without the basic knowledge of an Arch system seens like a recipe for frustration.

wkat4242 3y ago
If you're capable of installing arch, then yes it's better. Manjaro is more for those who are not. Really, the first time you install Arch you're stuck in pages and pages of wiki trying to make decisions like what kind of partition scheme you want, what kind of network configuration tool, what kind of disk encryption, blabla. For people like you and me, this is fine. The idea is you learn from it as you go, you tailor the system to your needs. Personally I use FreeBSD, not Arch which takes a similar approach (a slight bit more guided) and is a little bit more opinionated but also offers some cool options not as readily available in the linux world. But reality is, most people are not like us, they are already put off by a Next-Next-Finish installer. The Arch wiki might as well be in Chinese for them (or in Dutch, if the user just happens to be Chinese). While I've never used Manjaro other than on a Live CD, I understand this is the usecase it tries to cover.
- Barrin92 3y ago
  >Really, the first time you install Arch you're stuck in pages and pages of wiki Not at all the case any more. Arch isos now come with an install script (literally just 'archinstall' from the live medium). I had never installed arch and it took me 15 minutes, it's a fully guided setup.
  - samtheprogram 3y ago
    Can anyone care to explain why this is downvoted? I'm upvoting now so it may not continue to appear that way, but (besides that I loathe downvoted comments with no responses): I'm a Manjaro user specifically because of the easy install. It's not that I'm not capable (Linux/sysadmin internals are interesting to me and I am often going down rabbit holes and exploring distro differences) but it's just that (a) when I want to install an OS I usually want to be up and running fast and (b) I'd like something with more conventions so when things do inevitably go wrong it's a bit easier to reason about the system relative to other users. So I'm wondering if my next install should be Arch or one of the other Arch-based distro -- is archinstall not a 15 minute install or does it have some other pressing issue?
    - c-hendricks 3y ago
      archinstall is fine. Especially if you don't have to do much complicated with the partitioning. It will get you a system pretty quickly. The Arch community has a lot of toxicity. Maybe there's some sunk cost from people getting Arch installed the hard way, but it's full of the attitude that Arch should be hard.
      - memefrog 3y ago
        I've seen hundreds of comments over the years making the same claim as you. I've never seen an instance of this alleged toxicity. The attitude people display is not "Arch should be hard" but that Arch provides excellent resources to learn how to use the system yourself, and that the Arch way is for you to figure things out yourself. Expecting to be handheld will result in people reminding you of this, often quite directly. But in my view, what is more toxic than people saying 'RTFM' is people destroying a community with low-effort "help me now!" spam devoid of proper debugging details or any evidence they've read the documentation and tried to work it out themselves before asking for help. Nobody says "Arch is a great first choice of distro" except with the explicit qualifier "if you want to get your hands dirty and read a lot of documentation". So nobody that comes to Arch has any excuse, in my opinion, for not bothering to learn how to do it. Again this isn't the attitude "Arch should be hard". It's the attitude that you shouldn't expect other Arch users to spoonfeed you when they've already provided a comprehensive wiki and installation guide and there are searchable forums full of troubleshooting you can refer to. Arch isn't made hard on purpose, but as a natural consequence of the way it is structured (minimally) it is difficult for a completely new user to get going unless they read the documentation. Ironically, projects like archinstall prove that difficulty isn't a goal but an unfortunate side-effect: they're perfectly happy to make things easier if it doesn't compromise the integrity of the project. They're not going to automatically install a desktop environment for everyone just to make things easier.
        jcpst 3y ago
        This has been my experience. I’ve been using arch for ten years. The deepest I’ve had to go is search the forum if I couldn’t figure out something from the wiki. The wiki is so good that it’s common to come across it and find your answer for your linux question even if you are using a distro other than arch.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Yeah the last time I used arch (I guess about 4 years ago) that installer was in a pretty much permanent "under maintenance" state :) Cool to hear they fixed it since.
- Zetaphor 3y ago
  Those people should consider something like Fedora with KDE. Arch is never a good choice if you're not willing to get your hands dirty in the terminal
  - GoofballJones 3y ago
    But it makes the people who figure out how to install it think they're some kind of hacker/coder...so they get this elitist attitude about them.
    - tehnub 3y ago
      In my experience, Arch users have the opposite attitude. They want to empower you to fix your system yourself. On the Arch forums, even "silly" questions are usually met with a nod in the right direction at least, if not substantial back and forth help. Perhaps they're elitist in the sense that they believe Arch is a superior OS compared to many other options, but not in the sense of gatekeeping.
      - Lapsa 3y ago
        I do think it's superior OS compared to many alternatives which is precisely why I'm using it. likely there are better, I don't know. heck - you can even build whole Unix thing from scratch if you fancy so. but the problem with that is that Arch satisfies all my needs / ain't seeing advantages desirable enough elsewhere / I'm lazy.
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        You have both kinds IMO. I met Arch users that are all 1337 and think they are the best. Usually they don't actually know much about their system at all. And others that are like you say... Helpful but a bit protective.
    - laeri 3y ago
      I don't think that's the case. For me personally it gave me more control over my system and understanding. Nothing elitist about that. Also the arch wiki has very high quality. It is a good feeling to start with something minimal and build on it until you have something that is totally customized to your needs. Sure you can start with a distro that has a lot of things preconfigured but you will need to reverse engineer first. Arch gives you the greenfield approach which is in my opinion more enjoyable.
- shudza 3y ago
  EndeavourOS does the same and is miles better. I switched a while ago, never looked back.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    Can you elaborate on the "miles better" thing? I'm very close to provisioning several Linux machines. My home server is using Manjaro and has been rock-solid for 2.5 years now. What will EndeavourOS do better?
    - pmarreck 3y ago
      if you’re both provisioning and managing several linux machines roughly equally, NixOS is a no-brainer.
      - pdimitar 3y ago
        I have found NixOS to be anything but a no-brainer, sadly.
    - noirbot 3y ago
      As someone who just switched to Endeavor on my desktop recently, I appreciate that it feels like the right amount of "you have all the power and options" that Arch promises, but also has the sort of "It just works out of the box" that I had with Ubuntu/Fedora. The AUR is so nice, as you know. Not having to really mess around with Snap vs. Flatpak and the like and just using yay or pacman to get everything is amazing. I'm not sure how much better it is than Manjaro, but it's just good. It feels like I could dive into doing things the hardcore Arch way any time I wanted, but also provides the UX tools to do most of the same things if you want the more simple option with some guardrails.
      - pdimitar 3y ago
        RE: your last paragraph, I do the same with Manjaro and I don't feel that you differentiated EndeavourOS (or Arch) at all. In this entire thread several people basically say "Arch > Manjaro" and proceed to use the word "feel" multiple times which -- as I'm sure you can see -- is not a compelling and logical emotionless argument. I've messed around on a Manjaro machine a lot and only broke it once (and I knew that I did so, it wasn't a random problem). It seems that nobody can answer clearly and differentiate one distro in favor of another. :|
- c-hendricks 3y ago
  It's no full blown GUI installer, but `archinstall` has been bundled with the .iso for a while now.
- constantcrying 3y ago
  I have no problem with giving people a "Next-Next-Finish installer", but the system they get should reflect that. With Manjaro you do get quite a quirky distro and while the AUR is great, it is also a good way to create a very unstable system, especially when your system doesn't even use the Arch packages. This leaves the user quite exposed if anything should ever fail. To be honest I think most people are better served with other distros, because they tend to deliver them the experience they actually want.
  - kovac 3y ago
    AUR is part of the official repository of Manjaro? That doesn't seem like a good idea.
    - constantcrying 3y ago
      No, the Arch packages and the Manjaro package repos are different, but the AUR packages are obviously the same.
- lumb63 3y ago
  What you’ve said above is why Manjaro doesn’t notionally make much sense to me. Manjaro is the intersect on the Venn diagram of “wants to be able to build everything up themselves and customize everything, at great time cost to self, and understand everything” and “wants a plug-and-play replacement for a traditional desktop OS” - in my experience, that overlap is 0 users. I’ve been running Arch for almost a decade and it hasn’t been all easy, but I have a system now that I know in and out, is built exactly how I want it, etc. I have wanted to try Manjaro because I’ve heard good things about it, but what can it provide for me? Nothing. Coming from the other side, if someone isn’t comfortable with a terminal and a lot of frustration, why would they look to an Arch distro? Debian or Fedora are much friendlier for first-time Linux users. It seems to me that in trying to appeal to everyone, Manjaro has coincidentally appealed to no one.
  - hkt 3y ago
    I switched from Debian to Manjaro a few years ago after about ten years of using a Debian desktop. I can tell you that actually the main draw isn't customisability or anything of that kind: it is up to date software. Manjaro is rarely far behind its upstreams, unlike Debian. What's more is it usually comes out the box with sane defaults, much like Debian. I've not had to do anything "technical" to run my desktop, any more than I would have to on an OSX laptop for work, say. So it isn't really right to say Manjaro appeals to nobody. It appeals to the technically minded and impatient, which I am.
  - beebeepka 3y ago
    See, I feel the exact opposite on every account. Except I don't act like my word is gospel and nobody should think differently. Nerd arrogance at its best
- tehnub 3y ago
  I don't think anyone is incapable of installing Arch, unless unwilling means incapable (or if that person is in a situation where they're prevented from installing it). Here's the installation guide: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/installation_guide https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/installation_guide. If you're a total newcomer to linux, you have to be willing to spend say, six hours, slowly going through the installation, carefully reading the guide, sometimes going back a step. If you're someone who's installed a distro before, it'll probably take less than 45 minutes. Unwilling is not incapable. The only prerequisites for installing Arch are a desire to use Arch and the good sense to Google "Arch installation guide".
  - marcus_holmes 3y ago
    I used it for the first time last year on a work laptop, and had zero problems installing it. The documentation is great and very clear. Took me a couple of hours to get everything up and running, I think.
  - aquova 3y ago
    That's exactly their point. Arch is my personal distro of choice for a number of reasons, but to go to someone, even if they're interested in it, and say "it's a great distribution! Here's an entire manual just on getting it installed, it only takes six hours!" will turn away all but the most curious of individuals. I personally do think it's a worthwhile endeavor, and not as hard as people say, but the first time you do it, it can seem like a Herculean task.
    - tehnub 3y ago
      I agree with you on all that, but regarding your first point, they shouldn’t have said capable, but rather “willing.” I think people are too quick to say “oh, I could never do that” when in reality they could, or could at least get pretty damn close to it.
    - lll-o-lll 3y ago
      It’s an extremely good point. I went Linux for the first time in about 20 years recently. It was a raspberry pi and Manjaro had a 64 bit distro. It was a great experience, easy to get going, and made me fall in love with pacman and the aur, so I now use arch on everything. Maybe there are better than Manjaro arch based starter distros, but for getting someone into Linux, my experience with Manjaro was great.
- medler 3y ago
  I ran arch for a little while and really did not like it. Of the ~10 distros I’ve used over the years, Arch was by far the least stable. Turns out I don’t want to be the alpha tester for every piece of software on my machine. A distro like Manjaro that delays package updates for a few weeks seems preferable for me.
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    >A distro like Manjaro that delays package updates for a few weeks seems preferable for me. It is actually worse, especially if you are using AUR packages. But to be honest Arch has been extremely stable for me.
    - medler 3y ago
      Interesting, could you explain more?
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    Arch was definitely a less enjoyable experience for me than Redhat derived distros for similar reasons, but might just be my preference.
  - goingtosleep 3y ago
    People say Arch is stable. Yes, it's stable until some nasty unexpected thing like the grub issue happens. Even though I'm willing to fix issues, I don't want to fix things accidentally when I need my PC to work.
- chaxor 3y ago
  It's not really hard anymore at all. The installer gives you a TUI with options to select what you want, and pretty sane defaults. Setup is pretty easy and I would compare to the ease of Manjaro, although without the "snazzy gui" look, but very functionally equivalent TUI.
- cycomanic 3y ago
  Well there's always endeavor which is essentially arch with a user friendly installer.
danShumway 3y ago
I don't think they're interchangeable (I wouldn't recommend someone using Manjaro just switch to Arch if they're not either willing to learn or already knowledgeable), but specifically where stability is concerned -- anecdotally yes, I've had more issues to debug on Manjaro than on Arch. I haven't tried EndeavourOS or any of the other Manjaro replacements, but next time that I need to set up a Linux computer quickly and don't have the patience to set up Arch, I probably will try one of them. I will say in Manjaro's defense that even with some of its weirdness, I think I've had fewer issues on Manjaro than I have on Debian-based systems like Ubuntu. But I don't think that's a fair comparison because I haven't used Ubuntu in a while and I wasn't running it in parallel to Manjaro. So I suspect some of the increased stability has come from just general Linux progress and me knowing more about how to keep a computer stable.

wkat4242 3y ago

If you're capable of installing arch, then yes it's better. Manjaro is more for those who are not. Really, the first time you install Arch you're stuck in pages and pages of wiki trying to make decisions like what kind of partition scheme you want, what kind of network configuration tool, what kind of disk encryption, blabla. For people like you and me, this is fine. The idea is you learn from it as you go, you tailor the system to your needs. Personally I use FreeBSD, not Arch which takes a similar approach (a slight bit more guided) and is a little bit more opinionated but also offers some cool options not as readily available in the linux world. But reality is, most people are not like us, they are already put off by a Next-Next-Finish installer. The Arch wiki might as well be in Chinese for them (or in Dutch, if the user just happens to be Chinese). While I've never used Manjaro other than on a Live CD, I understand this is the usecase it tries to cover.

Barrin92 3y ago
>Really, the first time you install Arch you're stuck in pages and pages of wiki Not at all the case any more. Arch isos now come with an install script (literally just 'archinstall' from the live medium). I had never installed arch and it took me 15 minutes, it's a fully guided setup.
- samtheprogram 3y ago
  Can anyone care to explain why this is downvoted? I'm upvoting now so it may not continue to appear that way, but (besides that I loathe downvoted comments with no responses): I'm a Manjaro user specifically because of the easy install. It's not that I'm not capable (Linux/sysadmin internals are interesting to me and I am often going down rabbit holes and exploring distro differences) but it's just that (a) when I want to install an OS I usually want to be up and running fast and (b) I'd like something with more conventions so when things do inevitably go wrong it's a bit easier to reason about the system relative to other users. So I'm wondering if my next install should be Arch or one of the other Arch-based distro -- is archinstall not a 15 minute install or does it have some other pressing issue?
  - c-hendricks 3y ago
    archinstall is fine. Especially if you don't have to do much complicated with the partitioning. It will get you a system pretty quickly. The Arch community has a lot of toxicity. Maybe there's some sunk cost from people getting Arch installed the hard way, but it's full of the attitude that Arch should be hard.
    - memefrog 3y ago
      I've seen hundreds of comments over the years making the same claim as you. I've never seen an instance of this alleged toxicity. The attitude people display is not "Arch should be hard" but that Arch provides excellent resources to learn how to use the system yourself, and that the Arch way is for you to figure things out yourself. Expecting to be handheld will result in people reminding you of this, often quite directly. But in my view, what is more toxic than people saying 'RTFM' is people destroying a community with low-effort "help me now!" spam devoid of proper debugging details or any evidence they've read the documentation and tried to work it out themselves before asking for help. Nobody says "Arch is a great first choice of distro" except with the explicit qualifier "if you want to get your hands dirty and read a lot of documentation". So nobody that comes to Arch has any excuse, in my opinion, for not bothering to learn how to do it. Again this isn't the attitude "Arch should be hard". It's the attitude that you shouldn't expect other Arch users to spoonfeed you when they've already provided a comprehensive wiki and installation guide and there are searchable forums full of troubleshooting you can refer to. Arch isn't made hard on purpose, but as a natural consequence of the way it is structured (minimally) it is difficult for a completely new user to get going unless they read the documentation. Ironically, projects like archinstall prove that difficulty isn't a goal but an unfortunate side-effect: they're perfectly happy to make things easier if it doesn't compromise the integrity of the project. They're not going to automatically install a desktop environment for everyone just to make things easier.
      - jcpst 3y ago
        This has been my experience. I’ve been using arch for ten years. The deepest I’ve had to go is search the forum if I couldn’t figure out something from the wiki. The wiki is so good that it’s common to come across it and find your answer for your linux question even if you are using a distro other than arch.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Yeah the last time I used arch (I guess about 4 years ago) that installer was in a pretty much permanent "under maintenance" state :) Cool to hear they fixed it since.
Zetaphor 3y ago
Those people should consider something like Fedora with KDE. Arch is never a good choice if you're not willing to get your hands dirty in the terminal
- GoofballJones 3y ago
  But it makes the people who figure out how to install it think they're some kind of hacker/coder...so they get this elitist attitude about them.
  - tehnub 3y ago
    In my experience, Arch users have the opposite attitude. They want to empower you to fix your system yourself. On the Arch forums, even "silly" questions are usually met with a nod in the right direction at least, if not substantial back and forth help. Perhaps they're elitist in the sense that they believe Arch is a superior OS compared to many other options, but not in the sense of gatekeeping.
    - Lapsa 3y ago
      I do think it's superior OS compared to many alternatives which is precisely why I'm using it. likely there are better, I don't know. heck - you can even build whole Unix thing from scratch if you fancy so. but the problem with that is that Arch satisfies all my needs / ain't seeing advantages desirable enough elsewhere / I'm lazy.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      You have both kinds IMO. I met Arch users that are all 1337 and think they are the best. Usually they don't actually know much about their system at all. And others that are like you say... Helpful but a bit protective.
  - laeri 3y ago
    I don't think that's the case. For me personally it gave me more control over my system and understanding. Nothing elitist about that. Also the arch wiki has very high quality. It is a good feeling to start with something minimal and build on it until you have something that is totally customized to your needs. Sure you can start with a distro that has a lot of things preconfigured but you will need to reverse engineer first. Arch gives you the greenfield approach which is in my opinion more enjoyable.
shudza 3y ago
EndeavourOS does the same and is miles better. I switched a while ago, never looked back.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  Can you elaborate on the "miles better" thing? I'm very close to provisioning several Linux machines. My home server is using Manjaro and has been rock-solid for 2.5 years now. What will EndeavourOS do better?
  - pmarreck 3y ago
    if you’re both provisioning and managing several linux machines roughly equally, NixOS is a no-brainer.
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      I have found NixOS to be anything but a no-brainer, sadly.
  - noirbot 3y ago
    As someone who just switched to Endeavor on my desktop recently, I appreciate that it feels like the right amount of "you have all the power and options" that Arch promises, but also has the sort of "It just works out of the box" that I had with Ubuntu/Fedora. The AUR is so nice, as you know. Not having to really mess around with Snap vs. Flatpak and the like and just using yay or pacman to get everything is amazing. I'm not sure how much better it is than Manjaro, but it's just good. It feels like I could dive into doing things the hardcore Arch way any time I wanted, but also provides the UX tools to do most of the same things if you want the more simple option with some guardrails.
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      RE: your last paragraph, I do the same with Manjaro and I don't feel that you differentiated EndeavourOS (or Arch) at all. In this entire thread several people basically say "Arch > Manjaro" and proceed to use the word "feel" multiple times which -- as I'm sure you can see -- is not a compelling and logical emotionless argument. I've messed around on a Manjaro machine a lot and only broke it once (and I knew that I did so, it wasn't a random problem). It seems that nobody can answer clearly and differentiate one distro in favor of another. :|
c-hendricks 3y ago
It's no full blown GUI installer, but `archinstall` has been bundled with the .iso for a while now.
constantcrying 3y ago
I have no problem with giving people a "Next-Next-Finish installer", but the system they get should reflect that. With Manjaro you do get quite a quirky distro and while the AUR is great, it is also a good way to create a very unstable system, especially when your system doesn't even use the Arch packages. This leaves the user quite exposed if anything should ever fail. To be honest I think most people are better served with other distros, because they tend to deliver them the experience they actually want.
- kovac 3y ago
  AUR is part of the official repository of Manjaro? That doesn't seem like a good idea.
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    No, the Arch packages and the Manjaro package repos are different, but the AUR packages are obviously the same.
lumb63 3y ago
What you’ve said above is why Manjaro doesn’t notionally make much sense to me. Manjaro is the intersect on the Venn diagram of “wants to be able to build everything up themselves and customize everything, at great time cost to self, and understand everything” and “wants a plug-and-play replacement for a traditional desktop OS” - in my experience, that overlap is 0 users. I’ve been running Arch for almost a decade and it hasn’t been all easy, but I have a system now that I know in and out, is built exactly how I want it, etc. I have wanted to try Manjaro because I’ve heard good things about it, but what can it provide for me? Nothing. Coming from the other side, if someone isn’t comfortable with a terminal and a lot of frustration, why would they look to an Arch distro? Debian or Fedora are much friendlier for first-time Linux users. It seems to me that in trying to appeal to everyone, Manjaro has coincidentally appealed to no one.
- hkt 3y ago
  I switched from Debian to Manjaro a few years ago after about ten years of using a Debian desktop. I can tell you that actually the main draw isn't customisability or anything of that kind: it is up to date software. Manjaro is rarely far behind its upstreams, unlike Debian. What's more is it usually comes out the box with sane defaults, much like Debian. I've not had to do anything "technical" to run my desktop, any more than I would have to on an OSX laptop for work, say. So it isn't really right to say Manjaro appeals to nobody. It appeals to the technically minded and impatient, which I am.
- beebeepka 3y ago
  See, I feel the exact opposite on every account. Except I don't act like my word is gospel and nobody should think differently. Nerd arrogance at its best
tehnub 3y ago
I don't think anyone is incapable of installing Arch, unless unwilling means incapable (or if that person is in a situation where they're prevented from installing it). Here's the installation guide: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/installation_guide https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/installation_guide. If you're a total newcomer to linux, you have to be willing to spend say, six hours, slowly going through the installation, carefully reading the guide, sometimes going back a step. If you're someone who's installed a distro before, it'll probably take less than 45 minutes. Unwilling is not incapable. The only prerequisites for installing Arch are a desire to use Arch and the good sense to Google "Arch installation guide".
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  I used it for the first time last year on a work laptop, and had zero problems installing it. The documentation is great and very clear. Took me a couple of hours to get everything up and running, I think.
- aquova 3y ago
  That's exactly their point. Arch is my personal distro of choice for a number of reasons, but to go to someone, even if they're interested in it, and say "it's a great distribution! Here's an entire manual just on getting it installed, it only takes six hours!" will turn away all but the most curious of individuals. I personally do think it's a worthwhile endeavor, and not as hard as people say, but the first time you do it, it can seem like a Herculean task.
  - tehnub 3y ago
    I agree with you on all that, but regarding your first point, they shouldn’t have said capable, but rather “willing.” I think people are too quick to say “oh, I could never do that” when in reality they could, or could at least get pretty damn close to it.
  - lll-o-lll 3y ago
    It’s an extremely good point. I went Linux for the first time in about 20 years recently. It was a raspberry pi and Manjaro had a 64 bit distro. It was a great experience, easy to get going, and made me fall in love with pacman and the aur, so I now use arch on everything. Maybe there are better than Manjaro arch based starter distros, but for getting someone into Linux, my experience with Manjaro was great.
medler 3y ago
I ran arch for a little while and really did not like it. Of the ~10 distros I’ve used over the years, Arch was by far the least stable. Turns out I don’t want to be the alpha tester for every piece of software on my machine. A distro like Manjaro that delays package updates for a few weeks seems preferable for me.
- constantcrying 3y ago
  >A distro like Manjaro that delays package updates for a few weeks seems preferable for me. It is actually worse, especially if you are using AUR packages. But to be honest Arch has been extremely stable for me.
  - medler 3y ago
    Interesting, could you explain more?
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Arch was definitely a less enjoyable experience for me than Redhat derived distros for similar reasons, but might just be my preference.
- goingtosleep 3y ago
  People say Arch is stable. Yes, it's stable until some nasty unexpected thing like the grub issue happens. Even though I'm willing to fix issues, I don't want to fix things accidentally when I need my PC to work.
chaxor 3y ago
It's not really hard anymore at all. The installer gives you a TUI with options to select what you want, and pretty sane defaults. Setup is pretty easy and I would compare to the ease of Manjaro, although without the "snazzy gui" look, but very functionally equivalent TUI.
cycomanic 3y ago
Well there's always endeavor which is essentially arch with a user friendly installer.

danShumway 3y ago

I don't think they're interchangeable (I wouldn't recommend someone using Manjaro just switch to Arch if they're not either willing to learn or already knowledgeable), but specifically where stability is concerned -- anecdotally yes, I've had more issues to debug on Manjaro than on Arch. I haven't tried EndeavourOS or any of the other Manjaro replacements, but next time that I need to set up a Linux computer quickly and don't have the patience to set up Arch, I probably will try one of them. I will say in Manjaro's defense that even with some of its weirdness, I think I've had fewer issues on Manjaro than I have on Debian-based systems like Ubuntu. But I don't think that's a fair comparison because I haven't used Ubuntu in a while and I wasn't running it in parallel to Manjaro. So I suspect some of the increased stability has come from just general Linux progress and me knowing more about how to keep a computer stable.