Hey fellas friends. Sorry to create yet another post on this topic (maybe we should have a sticky for this?).
About 2 weeks ago I decided it was time to move on from Windows and installed Manjaro. I would consider myself a newbie-intermediate level linux user.
Though I’ve used Windows most my life, we use Linux servers (no GUI) at work, managing them is part of job description. I also own a late 2011 Macbook Pro with vanilla Arch Linux. I barely ever use it but boy, Arch really brought it back to life!
I’ve been reasonably happy with Manjaro so far, feels easy and intuitive to use but the community has made me aware that Manjaro is maybe a questionable choice. Since I don´t plan on distro-hopping a lot I want to get it right sooner rather than later.
Here’s what I’m looking for:
- Rolling distribution, preferably. Though this machine is also used for work, our environment depends mostly on remote servers anyway. I’d rather have a distribution that provides the most recent packages for whatever I want
- I don´t mind running a distribution that forces me learn new things or do things in a different way, I kinda embrace it. I just don´t enjoy complexity for complexity’s sake.
- KDE is my preferred Desktop Environment so far, though I guess that’s not very relevant. I’d love to run Hyprland, but you know… Nvidia :(
- I play games on Steam but from my understanding this doesn´t matter either. Everything I tried worked great, I don´t think I want a ¨gaming focused" distro or anything like that
- No Ubuntu, please.
My hardware, in case you feel is relevant!
OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64
Kernel: 6.5.5-1-MANJARO
Shell: bash 5.1.16
Resolution: 2560x1440, 2560x1440
WM: KWin
Terminal: konsole
Terminal Font: MesloLGS NF 10
CPU: 12th Gen Intel i7-12700K (20) @ 4.900GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Lite Hash Rate
Memory: 23313MiB / 64087MiB
Anything but Manjaro. I won’t get into the reasons why because it’s easy to find, but suffice it to say that it’s an amateur distro that makes dumb mistakes.
If you want rolling, Arch, Tumbleweed and Endeavour are the first places to look. Maybe even Fedora because it updates very fast, although it’s not rolling.
I’ve been using Manjaro for years without issue. I fully understand the arguments against using it, but it’s never been a problem for me and I’m too lazy to distro hop for no good reason.
Are there problems with Manjaro? Yes, of course.
Are they bad enough that “anything but Manjaro” is good advice to give to someone? IMO, no.
In short: Manjaro sucks. No one should ever use it.
For rolling distro you should look at:
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Opensuse Tumbleweed: latest packages, well tested, bullet proof reliability and built in system rollback. RPM based.
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Garuda Linux: full flavoured ARCH. Very fast, has all the latest packages. Reliable. Built in rollback. Cool theming.
In short: Manjaro sucks. No one should ever use it.
I’ve seen their certificates fail to renew multiple times. I feel like I don’t know anything, but I could at least certbot.
They are notorious for breaking your system because they mix old packages with new which causes dependency issues and driver issues.
If you’re using a rolling distro both the system packages and library’s, as well as the apps packages must both be up to date.
Manjaro doesn’t follow this
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I switched to fedora some months ago and I’ve been really enjoying it. Maybe worth a shot.
Have you looked into Solus at all? They are rolling and build with a focus on desktop usage.
If you are tired of Arch, why not give Tumbleweed a chance.
You want to game on your work machine?? Okay.
So KDE, and gaming, and rolling, and stable kinda.
- Opensuse Kalpa: Tumbleweed based immutable, not sure about codecs
- Fedora Kinoite-nvidia from ublue
You want to game on your work machine?? Okay.
It’s more like the other way around, I happen to work on my gaming machine :P Cheers!
Yet another one of my Garuda Linux shill posts. IMHO thr best arch based distro. As easy to setup as Manjaro. Check out their KDE light version if you don’t like their theme, which is what I use. I think their edgy theme is THE WORST. The distro itself is great tho. Been running it for a few months without distro hopping, this is huge for me.
Debian testing
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
Yet another “Time to reccomend EndeavourOS” reply.
Seriously tho, EndeavourOS is a pretty solid distro, and not that different from what you’re currently rocking (Manjaro is based on Arch) except well…it actually works as an Arch based distro should, unlike Manjaro. EndeavourOS’s a bit on the light side tho, and it comes with no GUI Add/Remove Software outta the box, but if you don’t like using the Konsole for that, nothing a “yay pamac-all” (or “yay pamac-all-no-snap”) and a bit of installing the packages you want/need can’t fix.
I’ve looked into EndeavourOS now, and I’m very confused. Normally I’d download a .iso and burn it onto a USB using Balena Etcher (or Rufus), but the official page for EndeavourOS doesn’t have a .iso. I tried following “method three” on that article, but I don’t understand the dialog asking me to choose between Raspberry Pi, Odroid, and Pinebook. I don’t have any of those. I just have my own desktop PC with its Intel CPU. Also I see “ARM” everywhere and I think that also implies incompatibility because ARM is RISC whereas my 6th-gen Intel is CISC.
How do I get started?
Install ventoy to a flash drive, download iso from the landing page, drag it to the flash, boot
I realized it’s the literal homepage that has the .iso. I’m gonna try it out in a VM when I get the chance :)
I’m going to also recommend EndeavourOS. Or, if you’re game, just go for Arch. Sure the first time you install will be painful, but you’ll learn a lot about how everything works together. Then you will be more proficient at fixing it if and when you break it.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed gets recommended here a lot. Just be aware: It’s an expert distro masquerading as beginner-friendly.
Out of the box, it won’t recognize printers and scanners. Setting them up is a hassle without cups-airprint and sane-airscan which aren’t preinstalled, and the latter is only available through a user’s repo.Printer setup will also fail unless you add an exception to the built-in firewall. Nothing in the GUI tells you about this.
It also won’t play web videos before you install the codecs. These are available in the packman repo, which will require learning the concept of repo priorities and “vendor-change”, what it does and when to use it. (It can break your system)
The package manager is very sophisticated and complex, but some of its features shouldn’t be used in Tumbleweed. Updating Tumbleweed like you would the normal fixed release system is possible (in fact, if you use the GUI, it’s the default) but it will break your system.
And the system administration tool YAST offers a lot of functionality that is already present in the KDE options. What the differences are? Who knows.
There’s nothing wrong with Manjaro. If you say that you’re “reasonably happy with Manjaro so far, feels easy and intuitive” and you’re not into distro-hopping then I see no reason for you to switch.
If you’ve already installed Arch on another machine you probably know these things already, but here’s the basics for using an Arch-based distro (any Arch-based distro, this applies to all of them):
- You gotta keep rolling. You don’t have to upgrade every day, you don’t have to upgrade every week, but once every few months you should. That’s the whole point of a rolling distro, if you don’t want rolling you can look into point-release distros.
- It’s best to use
pacman -Syuon command line to do upgrades. - Don’t install critical stuff from AUR. Don’t install AUR graphical drivers, or AUR kernels, or replace system packages with AUR packages.
- Don’t install experimental kernels and especially don’t uninstall all other kernels and only keep the experimental ones, that’s just asking for trouble. Stick to stable/longterm kernels and always keep two versions around, just in case.
Specifically for Manjaro there’s similar advice:
- Stick to the stable releases, don’t mess around with testing or unstable unless you really know what you’re doing.
- If you want to know what’s coming in updates you can check out the announcements page. That’s also where you can find tips for fixing various package upstream annoyances – in every release post, under “known fixes and workarounds” (which happen occasionally, it’s the price you pay when using a rolling distro and staying on the bleeding edge).
There’s nothing wrong with Manjaro
That’s not quite right.
I’d usually recommend Linux Mint, but since you seems to be up for a challenge, how about Gentoo?
Otherwise for something more mild, you can go for OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
I feel like I’d break Gentoo really fast, to be honest
Just follow the handbook. You’ll be fine.
I’m just like you, newbie-intermediate Linux user who recently jumped from Windows to (Ubuntu then) Manjaro. What’s wrong with Manjaro?
Pasting an old reply of mine from another thread answering this same question:
Manjaro is…tricky.
I’ve called it an Arch based distro that kinda sucks at being an Arch based distro before, and I stand by that. You can’t treat Manjaro like you would EndeavourOS or Vanilla Arch Linux because of how Manjaro decides to do things: essentially, updates are held back by a couple of weeks for better and worse instead of being released as they’re made avaliable. While that means it can catch disastrous things like the GRUB issue another user pointed out (Manjaro was unaffected by it IIRC), it also means the system is prone to breaking itself more often. And you can forget about using the AUR if you’re using Manjaro–or well, you can, but the AUR and Manjaro are nortorious for not playing nice with one another because of the latter’s tendencies to hold back packages, which, natrually, leads to even more breaking.
Personally, I wouldn’t recomend it. However, If you don’t mind being extra careful with what you install (really that’s standard practice for any distro, but hey, I’ve never found a WIP package that messed up my system anywhere other than when using Manjaro, so make of that what you will), are willing to tolerate constant mild to severe breakage, and just using Flatpaks and appimages over the AUR, then give Manjaro a try, but otherwise? Go with EndeavourOS, or Garuda, or literally anything else.
I’ve been using Manjaro for years with zero issues. Far fewer than using Arch for example.
I can only speak to my expierence with Manjaro, and it was…not good. It pretty much found a way to uniquely break itself every boot from me…just treating it like I would Arch (i didn’t find out how you’re maybe supposed to use it till later, when i moved on to another distro). And in every Manjaro post or comment, there’s several anecdotes that are similiar to mine: somehow, someway, Manjaro freaked out and died…and then there’s a couple that are like yours: “I’ve used it for several years with zero problems” and i gotta ask: how? Legit curious. Is “waiting 14 days to update + not using the AUR at all, if possible” sound advise or am I waaaay off the mark?
It sounds equally weird to me to hear about people breaking Manjaro and I feel like I should be the one asking “how?” 🙂
There’s no need to wait 14 days to update, I update whenever I feel like it. And there’s no need to hold back from using the AUR, I have 76 AUR packages installed right now.
The only rule about AUR is the same rule they recommend on Arch too: don’t use it for critical packages. So don’t install kernels from AUR, or graphical drivers, or replace system packages with AUR stuff. Because AUR stuff will break, it’s not a question of “if” it’s a question of “when”, and it will happen on Arch just as well as any Arch derivate.
Other than that I can’t think of any reason why a Manjaro install would spontaneously break. Perhaps if you install an experimental kernel as the only kernel on your machine and it breaks? I’ve always stuck to LTS kernels myself, and I keep two LTS installed, just in case.
I’m in the same boat; been using Manjaro on my desktop for years without anything really breaking. I’ve told myself that when it does break and I can’t fix it I’ll distro hop again, but it just hasn’t been the case yet.
