I've used Linux right after the very first distros came out. Debian was one of those, and it is still my "go to" distro. If the distro that you are using works for your needs, that is the correct one. 🙂

I've daily driven Manjaro on 3 machines , the longest being 5 years. I use both AUR packages and Manjaro's packages and haven't had any breakages or anything failing

I've used Manjaro for the longest time among all distros, and have been using it for about a year now both on my desktop and laptop. I've had issues with package updates and a few other little things. But when I take a look at a bigger picture on different distros, I come across articles, videos, etc mentioning issues with all of them at different times, so the expectation I have is that no matter which distro I may choose, sooner or later there will be an issue with it. So I've been sticking with Manjaro, and have been pretty happy with it lately.

Interesting how I had the exact opposite experience with Arch and Manjaro. I've been using Arch as a main distro for about 2-3 months and I had problems popping up daily. Breaking the system, visual bugs and so. I've been using mainly Manjaro for almost 2 years now (and used AUR) and had almost no problems. It's actually the first Linux distro that I felt was stable enough for my main operating system.

When I was new to Linux I tried mint and enjoyed it. But because of my needs, it just felt hampered. Several Linux users kept pushing to avoid Arch and just use Manjaro or Fedora since they just “work” and I had nothing but issues. Fully manually installing Arch and carefully reading the wiki was the best decision I made. Arch is very comprehensive, I can manage exactly what I need, and because documentation is excellent I have zero issues figuring out problems. I don’t view myself as better for using Arch, I more respect those who do Linux from scratch, but Arch is the “true” beginner distro for understanding Linux. My view, anything that encourages you to learn and keep learning is a fantastic tool. Huge respect to Arch community, even when they get mad over people not rtfm. Edit: no disrespect to Manjaro or Fedora users. Enjoy what works for you. I speak only for my personal needs.

Funny, I was one such user for my first daily drive distro. I was with Manjaro for a bit, but I’m currently daily driving EndeavourOS.

I had problems learning Linux and nothing ever working, and I would get frustrated. Ubuntu made me give up for a while (like a year)... I installed Manjaro KDE and used it a long time because it ran perfectly. It was fantastic and the only reason I was able to learn and stick to Linux. I've used tons of Distros now, and mainly just use Fedora now, but I'll always have fond memories of Manjaro KDE working great enough to make me not give up. I had more breakages and problems with Arch than I ever did with Manjaro.

2 years ago I used Ubuntu and no matter what, .NET was broken with the latest release so I couldn’t code until Microsoft fixed it. So I just booted up Manjaro and it worked right out the box. I think there are plenty of reasons to use or not use a distro.

I used Manjaro for a long time, but I'm much happier with Endeavour. I switched to Nobara briefly, but Endeavour has been my favorite and I don't see myself leaving for anything else after leaving and coming back to it, and I've gone through a lot of different distros.

The bootloader meme kicked me. I once lost not bootloader, but kernel after updating Manjaro. 10/10 highly recommended to anyone who wants to learn how boot process works.

after a long break from using manjaro, I installed it again just a few days ago and am using it as a daily driver... easily switched to the LTS kernel, enabled the AUR, installed the chaotic-aur repo, and installed every app that I need without any issue... with the KDE desktop it looks good, its stable and I fully recommend it to anyone, don't listen to this Murphy dude, just try it for yourself and draw your own conclusions...

I've been using manjaro as my first distro and got enough linux experience and understanding. Recently got an SSD and installed arch with archinstall on it with ease. To be honest, for me arch is just like manjaro but with some packages missing by default.

I must admit that I find Manjaro's theming and desktop layouts very attractive. Any quick and easy way to incorporate these into a generic arch install, or an endeavour os install? Maybe an aur meta-package, or a 3rd party package repo?

I've been using Manjaro for 3 years now, it's actually good for beginners like me who came from Ubuntu. Timeshift had saved me from a lot of troubles, specially with the nvidia driver stuffs when doing updates. For AURs, yes you do have to be careful as it could ruin things quickly (that's why Timeshift exists for me). Yes, I've read and heard a lot about their bad track records which is why it's best to avoid for newbies. As much as I would love to move to EndeavourOS, I couldn't, not right now at least. And although the vanilla Arch is enticing, I don't have a time (even for EndeavourOS) nor the patience to do so sadly.

havent used it in like 4 years but back then i was very new to linux and it broke constantly, having so much interconnected software with configs made by someone else makes every problem so hard to find a fix for. doing everything yourself like arch might be difficult to start with, but when something breaks you tend to understand what went wrong because you put the thing together to start with.

Honestly, for quite experienced linux user (total of few weeks of pain on ubuntu, then few laboratories on debian/mxlinux on uni and few years on openSUSE), Manjaro feels like a perfect fit for me. I tried multiple times to install arch, but every time, at some point there was either a problem with pipewire or nvidia drivers, which caused arch to stop working or even refuse to install. The funniest part of this is that these issues , repeating the same exact steps, sometimes appeared and sometimes not. Therefore, after trying manjaro, which just plainly works, as software developer, needing a working system without a necessity to constantly rebuild everything (not saying about single packages, but the whole system), manjaro with its package availability seems like the best compromise between simplicity and stability of suse and fast, but broken arch.

I started using linux 2 years ago with manjaro, and I still use it, I have manjaro xfce on my laptop and manjaro-minimal xfce on my desktop. The first one that I switched to linux was my laptop and I did broke some things while learning at the start, but I never had a big problem in using it on a daily basis. Nowadays I use manjaro on its unstable branch so I'm as up to date as arch (dont have the 4:10 problem). I did had a little problem on a manjaro forum with a core dev, but it was solved when I took some time to dialog with him in dm. Overall it's a pretty good distro although I heard a lot of complaints (mostly about untrust of the community (linux in general) on the core devs of manjaro). I will take a look in this EndeavorOS probably though and I did play with Arch a little bit for some days and will probably try it again in the future.

I did go through a baby Distro phase with Kubuntu, however after swapping to Manjaro - and that was approximately 3-4 years ago, I haven't had the issues you're talking about - I tried to install official packages, didn't have clashes with other AUR packages due to dependencies on newer versions of packages, an unstable system or buggy behavior - it was quite reliable for me and the performance was good. I even messed around plenty of times with Wine, theming, I changed the display manager once or twice, changed the kernel manually once and customized, changed the shell and did various other customizations. When it comes to packages I also always preferred system packages or packages released by their developers rather than AUR/user-maintained packages. Was my costumization/using of the system just low-level enough that I didn't run through significant issues? 'cause I really don't remember anything significant, but it's still a possibility that I simply don't remember. What do you think: has it gotten worse since then or did? Or did I just miss those issues? Or did I behave responsibly? I'd ask about my memory, too, but I really can't know at this point. What are your thoughts?

I’ve installed Linux on many machines, all kinds of distros, but Manjaro was the only distro that I just couldn’t get to boot on my modern desktop after install, I tried different isos, gnome, xfce, none would work. Regular arch worked fine. I am a popOS user these days and it is by far the most polished and stable distro I have ever used. It’s fantastic

I'm running Manjaro Linux for years now. No problems at all .. everything worked out of the box. At least if you use the stable branch. In the beginning i used the testing branch because i needed support for my then brand new Ryzen 5 2700G. Yes that was a bit rough but i'm running Manjaro stable for years now without problems.

Your experience is similar to mine, I just used manjaro for longer before I started to feel the problems setting in. I originally picked up Manjaro because I was still having hardware issues after installing Arch for a long time, whereas Manjaro "just worked"... At first. These days I would not recommend Manjaro to anyone really.

Hey, I get it. I literally went through the same thing with Manjaro a while back. Shit was too jank so I went back to windows for a bit. Now I'm on Endeavor OS and man, I've never had a distro where things just... freaking....work! I've hardly had an issue with it, and any issue I've had was my fault mostly. Endeavor OS is honestly a damn good distro

I been using Linux Mint for it just works but I was considering to explore and try Manjaro but I do not want the headache. Thank you for the informative video :)

In the past 3-4 years, I've install Manjaro three times on my PCs. Unfortunately, two of those attempts resulted in glitchy and unusable systems, with broken functionality and screen tearing issues. On the third attempt, I managed to get it to work on a dual display setup with one FHD screen and another connected through VGA. While the experience wasn't as smooth as with my previous distros, it was at least working well. However, after installing some packages, some from the AUR and others from their official repos, and a few updates, the system became clumsy and glitchy once again. I uninstalled it and went back to my go-to and most frequently used distro at the time, Linux Mint. I've installed quite a few distros and different flavors over the five years that I've been using Linux, and for the past year and a half to two years, I've been using Artix. To this day, my recommended newbie-friendly, out-of-the-box distro for everyone is still Mint. I'm glad to see that Manjaro works for some people, but to be honest, I don't understand what it brings to the table. If I'm looking for a newbie-friendly distro (or actually something that truly works for everyone who isn't a power user), I would recommend Mint. If I want something more advanced, with access to the biggest amount of and latest packages, then I would directly go with Arch or Artix. Although I do understand the attractiveness of Manjaro, my experience with it being glitchy and broken defeated its purpose as the out-of-the-box Arch. I don't mean to bring hate to it, however. One of the coolest things about Linux is the wide variety of distros available to experiment with, allowing you to see what you like and what would fit your needs.

I've used Manjaro for 2+ years now, both my old desktop and my old laptop and I've been ready to switch to something else (Arch-based) for a while. For all the same reasons you state here! BUT... I've been fairly pleased with the experience compared to using Windows. I already switched to Arcolinux on my laptop, which is a completely different ballgame, and i love it! Switching away on my desktop is a dreaded prospect, because its a btrfs based install, and keeping my home partition is a bit involved without relying on a complete backup. But thats the way of Arch... It's very probably doable, but you have to invest the time and effort! And thats the main problem with Manjaro: Its announced as an almost dropin windows replacement, which 'just works' or tries to adopt the windows mindset of that it just works, but in reality its still linux/Arch-based: Learn to fix your own problems by learning to research solutions (RTFM, ask questions, search answers using internet ressources, etc!)

I've been using Linux since 1993, back then I was using Slackware. I switched between a number of distributions over the years. Experience with the different package managers helps. I use Gentoo Linux as of current with a laptop that has Nobara installed to test as a possible replacement for my Windows install. I had Pop_OS! in a virtual machine, but the release schedule based on their hardware largely. I do know that they're working on new hardware, hence light updates/releases. In the end, I will ikely go with Vanilla Arch unless Nobara does the job for me. If it doesn't work for me, then Gentoo will be installed as I'm familiar and comfortable with it.

I can totally relate to your experience with Manjaro! Liked and subscribed. I also believe that some distros shouldn't exist, and the community should focus on the more stable and superior ones. I've been using Linux Mint for 3 years now.

I started my Linux journey with Manjaro but eventually jumped to EndeavourOS, when their SSL expired the forth time (first for me) and I do plan to jump to Arch at some point

I am currently in Manjaro. I started with it and hopped all over the Linux desktop world (even Arch btw) and I love Manjaro. Most of the issues in this video are related to the AUR, and you can simply switch to the unstable branch of the OS then those issues don't exist anymore you will get updates exactly on time with Arch. The other stuff I cannot excuse.

What if I want just a semi-stable distro and use mostly flatpaks? It seems okay for me. Something like a fedora alternative

Been using Mint for a year, for my new PC i want something more advanced but stable so im switching to debian, been trying it in a virtual machine and honestly it feels great.

I started with Manjaro as my first linux experience. I am watching this video because at this point (1.5 years in) I am super frustrated with my experience. Things just stop working all the time, the system has freeze ups and I find it very difficult to find solutions. I learn tech stuff quickly but am def not any sort of super user. I am running my business through my linux laptop right now and just dont have time to solve issues and learn Linux... I need something that is stable and can run some games and had good forums with usable solutions... HELP! :)

Hey ur arch setup theming looks awesome. Can you create a video for it? Loved it

I was drawn in by Manjaro's ease of use and have used it since 2018, but lately I've been looking at jumping ship to either NixOS or raw Arch. The main trouble for me is that my primary machine is also my work machine. Gotta keep it running, unfortunately.

Yes! You came through with the Manjaro video. I wholeheartedly endorse the conclusion: install vanilla Arch and really make your system yours. I was a Manjaro user for close to 3 years, and although I never experienced a botched update that would necessitate a re-install, there were several annoyances in the distro that, ultimately, contributed to making me move away. It's true, Manjaro often will retain packages for a couple of weeks... if not more! In one instance, I waited weeks (maybe 5?) for the Manjaro repo to update a piece of software, only to give up and just reinstall from source. Pamac almost never worked for me when it came to system-wide updates: it would almost always hang. I would use pacman for that, even though that method is not officially endorsed by the developers (which shows just why Manjaro is really not Arch). Also, Manjaro comes with a lot of packages pre-installed, and I never did figure out which were cruft and which were not. With time, updating the system would take a bit over 15 minutes because of all the accumulated packages. Because of this long wait, I frequently forgot to update. Now with vanilla Arch, I only have half of the packages and everything is snappy. Updates are quick and painless. All that aside, trust is critical, so when you read about Manjaro's f-ups over and over, it breaks that trust, and that is why I had to leave it.

What's your thoughts on ArcoLinux? Its suppose to be a build up to being able to create your arch install on your own. I tried it for a bit and really enjoyed it, very basic but simple.

Yeah I had to clean install Manjaro 4 or 5 times in two years, because with any AUR installed running updates had a chance of rendering the system unbootable. I only stuck with it so long, because it was the first distro I found that could run the installer on my Nvidia card. Ubuntu I couldn't even get a tty to install the drivers like recommended online. I eventually switched to Pop!_OS. Then realized unlike Ubuntu, Debian's installer loaded on my graphics card and switched to that. Because some libraries current git hub projects are using are considered depericated by Ubuntu and downstream effected Pop!_OS (the hardest one to get working on 22.04 was sunshine an opensource Nvidia game streaming server), so often one or more libraries would often require browsing the Debian repository in a web browser to find/download the correct .deb and hoping force installing wouldn't break everything. The fact Debian still supported them and supported newer library in the same stable repository was a win win when lacking AUR.

I've been daily driving linux for nearly an entire year by now, and i was using endeavour. then my (nvidia) gpu died and the other one i had (also nvidia) was a fishy one, and, it wouldn't install the drivers, so i used manjaro's mhwd to figure out what drivers it would accept. with that figured out, i kept on using manjaro and i definitely see why it's not really recommended, although, i've been lucky enough to not run into issues so far. as soon as i get a proper amd gpu i'll go back to endeavour, or maybe arch, vanilla arch would be fun too

I do like pamac and it being in the core packages, along with the kernel switching menu that manjaro adds, I find those as compelling enough reasons to use it and really don't get why people are so negative about it, its been rock solid for me for 2 years and I think its a great gateway to arch.

Imagine being a youtube streamer and judge Manjaro with mediocre 1 month experience about a distro, that run in my 4 years experience on AMD Laptop and Intel/nvidia PC perfect stable and Manjaro KDE was and is my first distro, gaming performance also reallly good.

I used Manjaro for a couple of years. The main attraction was the rolling releases. However, this led to some problems. I kept finding little problems that I couldn't quite figure out. They weren't deadly - just annoyances. But they seemed to accumulate over time. The rolling releases didn't correct the issues. Ultimately I decided that occasionally wiping out the whole system with a new install wasn't such a bad thing after all. It's a pain in the butt, but it gets rid of a lot of cruft that could get in the way...

I haven't used Manjaro for the past 2-3 years but there was a period where I ran Manjaro on multiple devices and I did not run into any significant issues. Sure, if you don't switch on your device for a couple of months then the next bunch of updates might be tricky, but that's true even with a base Arch install. I moved away because of some of the shenanigans/drama that the Manjaro team were involved in, especially their certs expiring. Have things become a lot worse recently?

i remember a year ago when i tried installing majaro with i3 out of the box and after two installs it never booted up for me to use. arch works great after ricing the heck out of your own installer and supporting that installer by yourself. *manjaro is deprecated, use arch instead.*

I think in some ways, what you say of Manjaro is arguably true of all Linux distros aimed at beginners... they make things seem easier on the surface by just abstracting a lot of the details away, but actually make things harder in the long run. The moment you want to "go off the rails," so to speak, you'll need to learn a lot of details and fight with the way the system was designed. There's really not much of an in-between, IMO... either you go for stuff like Fedora and Ubuntu and deal with a few out of date packages and a limited selection of options to make maintaining your system easier, or use a distro like Arch or Gentoo and get your hands dirty. Stuff like Manjaro tends to work okay as long as you don't use the AUR, but at that point it's really not much different from using something like Fedora Beta versions to get bleeding-edge packages.

Kinda off topic: I've been using Linux for about 3 to 4 years now, starting off on my desktop, and it was an awesome experience. But things got a bit tricky when I switched to using it on my laptop. I tried out different distros, but I kept running into problems. Pop!_OS was the most user-friendly option I found, but I really wanted to try a good Arch-based distro because Arch was what got me super excited about PC tinkering in the first place. However, most of the time I've had this laptop, I've been feeling frustrated and discouraged. I mean, let's be real, for any operating system to be enjoyable, the basics need to work smoothly, right? I need that solid foundation to have the time and motivation to learn and have fun with it. Now, why did I just unload all of this on you? Well, the last time I tried Manjaro, my screen completely bricked. Yep, you heard me right. Talk about a major bummer. By the way, my laptop is an Avell A 70 mob (Avell is this Brazilian company that resells Clevo and Tongfang laptops).

I could never be convinced by anyone to no use any distro, I test the distro myself and if it works for me believe I'm gonna use it until I find it inappropriate.

I've been on Mint for 5 years now and play games on it just fine. I don't care that Mint is a "Noob" Linux distro, I install it and run with it as I don't care to customize my OS as much as other people do with their OS installations.

I have gone a weird route, starting off with Ubuntu waaay back in time... And then I just used whatever fitted my needs, but didn't actually replace windows because of lazyness. Then I gave Manjaro a try, and boy it was so good. Sooo much better than I expected. And so much worse. Just went over to Arch, as everyone is telling you it would be better. For me, it just wasn't. Same problems, and even more regularly. After that I switched to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Better experience in every aspect. Exactly as customizable, faster, lighter and more robust, so overall much, much higher quality. With Arch I ran into issues after every 3 to 6 months. Same with Manjaro, but the issues were much easier to repair and less severe. I didn't have issues with Tumbleweed yet, and I doubt that I will have any comparable headaches as with Arch there.

Manjaro is LITERALLY the only distro that works OOB with my setup! And I’ve lost count of how many I have tried. Really it’s more on nVidia than anything else, but it’s still ridiculous that even the likes of Ubuntu, Debian, Mint (another go-to for me), Fedora/Nobara, and over a dozen other, more niche distros utterly shit their pants at the presence of my Lenovo Graphics Dock! Plus, let’s face it, it’s got fantastic theming. And in case anybody asks, I’ve also tried Arch, Garuda, and Endeavor OS too. None of them work with my setup

I started using Arch from March, started with Manjaro but idk why stutters & lags after a few days on my i3 dual core laptop. Then distro hopped a bit & loved endeavour os, stayed on a bit for a while. Then came to know about pure vanilla arch & installed using Archinstall script. Used for a month with xfce de. Then saw soldoestech & jakoolit UKposts channel & switched to arch hyprland but they weren't minimal as I wanted & don't know or have time to fix things on my own. Currently on Archcraft Bspwm 😅 , waiting for some good minimal pre-configured hyprland installer script 😁

bro_which desktop environment are U using, its seem cool.I'm new one!

I was happy with the Manjaro system I've set up on a machine for my parents... until I wasn't. It managed to bork itself after an update due to mismatched versions, pretty much as described in this video. I've tried Arch for a couple of weeks and it was OK. However I've felt like I've had to configure and tweak too much to get it to where I was happy with the system. I now increasingly want to try building a NixOS config - it seems like a more organized approach to configure and administrate your system. Configs are in one place and not all over the system, dependencies are less likely to conflict and after you put in the time to configure it, I think it would be way easier to maintain and reproduce that system if you had to than trying to sift through the usual dotfiles, installed packages etc.

I started using Manjaro after years of using newbie distros (Ubuntu and Mint). Later I switched to pure Arch, the AUR was my life. After some wackiness with AMD drivers, and spending more time tinkering than actually using the distro, I wanted something more stable. Debian was too stable for me, so I found that Fedora was a nice compromise between stable and bleeding edge.

I am the kind of user who switches from Arch to Windows every few months and use archinstall to save time during the install. Manjaro was my first linux distro and it got borked within a couple weeks, probably because I was a newb and did something wrong myself.

I am “sort of” a beginner, like I may need to constantly learn how to accomplish simple terminal tasks, but I can run through an installer with ease and operating systems in general are rather easy from a user perspective, most things are intuitive. I spent over a month daily driving Manjaro on my main machine, as a windows user, and it worked far better than I expected, it even played games better than windows. I for many reasons was back on windows for a few months, but when I came back today just to update Manjaro, even did a kernel update, it was painless, and makes windows look like bloatware. Maybe your millage may vary, but I’ve found Manjaro to be rather pleasant. I am currently looking for something to stick to long term on a dedicated laptop, but also remain reliable and productive, and I keep getting calls back to Manjaro. I am torn, I feel like I should probably build my base of things around something else but I don’t want to be hopping or going too far in the weeds with different branch offs and potentially dropped projects. I also don’t really want to just use Ubuntu or mint, but I’m not entirely opposed either. Fedora got me a little tempted, and I’m iffy about Nix, I like what I hear but I also hear some downsides that I don’t have time to learn for such a singular thing. I am doing a bit of web design, starting a small business, admittedly using Microsoft and one drive (they have some god tier granular permissions and more for enterprise stuff, learning it), and learning JavaScript, I also have Adobe. What I’m getting at, windows is what has to work but I want to get a bit more into Linux, I just don’t have time to fuss too much, I’m also doing all this with a separate day job, and side job. Any of you have suggestions? I want to get more integrated with Linux, that’s for sure, I would like to be able to contribute after learning more languages and potentially ditch some of windows, and be better at say running Linux web servers and other neat projects with Pi’s, maybe even use them with business clients. (Beyond web design, small small business domains, email, basic IT needs, branding, digital footprint, and security, the starter pack for non technical people to have an online yet safe digital presence).

I'm curious if you would ever consider covering Obarun, recently switched from vanilla Arch to it and don't think I'll be going back.

I've been running Manjaro now as my daily driver for over a year and as my first proper Linux distro. I can say that I'm super happy with it and almost never run into issues. The only thing where problems popped up was when a newer kernel version (not LTS) were offered and it broke the system. That sucked but I have no problem with running the LTS kernel. I think you have some valid points in your video like the holding back of the software in their repos and the bad track record of the dev team. Though I think it is unfair to say not to recommend Manjaro to beginners as in my experience you rarely run into issues. If you tell beginners to go to pure Arch they'll just end up in configuration hell and will get demotivated very fast. All in all I think Manjaro is a good beginner distro, but also has some problems. If those concern you I'm on point with you to go to Endavour OS (though I have only heard recommendations and not tried it out myself).

i use garuda and try to stick to the chaotic aur and avoid the just aur packages and octopi is so nice

I'm currently in love with Nobara, Arch is just too overly complicated and breaked itself 3 times, from both software and hardware issues, Fedora and Debian are just so much stable, I see why they are the most popular.

Arch vanilla is fantastic but sometime when I have a machine to install and not much time I go for an Arch based system that has already been configured. Normally go for Arcolinux B. Everything setup and just works along with immediate access to the AUR. Unlike Manjaro which as you said holds back packages. Also had stability issues with Manjaro. Have tried pretty much all Arch based systems and always land up going to Arcolinux. Stable and just works.

I use arch. I have done the full install before it was painfull but I did succeed. But I broke that install so I reinstalled using archinstall, way less time.

I use pop and honestly I have been thinking about using it more. But with how some companies refuse to support Linux and I'm left with having to get a compatible PC with AMD hardware it still won't matter because most games I play don't work on Linux or some programs I use don't work period

I am just now watching this video. I wonder what Eric thinks now. I have been using it for about 2 months and completely love it. I have had no problems whatsoever. It is the first distro to find and use all my hardware out of the box. I have a webcam that isn't supported under Linux and every distro I have used couldn't use it. Under Manjaro, it works just fine. I am wondering if they got to a point where their popularity was too much for their internal personnel, but have now gotten past all that. I am sticking with Manjaro and until I see those issues arise, this will be my daily driver.

I use endeavour btw 🍻

im also use manjaro 1 month last year after switch back to xubuntu, its just to buggy, even my first boot from usb took even feel attempt just to make it run and frezze the heck out all of the time, especially when im update linux kernal, holy god error after error, im just a newbie start to using it through a recommend from internet but its scare me so much, im just want to use a fast distro for my weak laptop and its leave me with though horriable exp, sad for it

I love distros where i have to patch my package manager because _someone_ forgor to update an ssl cert

I love my Manjaro install, but never touched pamac. I solely use pacman and trizen in the terminel.

i used to use manjaro but not anymore but I don't understand the argument when people complain about packages being held back by just a week, which dependencies are getting major update within a week that will cause the package to break? and, majaro has officially stated that they don't recommend installing arch packages but users can do so on their own risk, and in pamac the AUR support is disabled by default, so you have to manually enable it to start using it

I tend to upgrade my hardware often and I've had troubles with manjaro keeping up with newer hardware I ended up moving to fedora were everything just works but you still have to build a desktop and they have copr similar to aur

1:40 - What window-manager (and system monitor topbar) are you using there? Does it work for Ubuntu KDE?

Manjaro has never broken on me and i heavily use Windows plugins on native Linux Apps via wine-staging, latest technologies like pipewire, on my commercial production system in a real-time recording studio with clients present. Now... I found Debian/Ubuntu PPAs much more dangerus than AUR. The AUR getts dependencies from the standard repositories. On the other hand, PPAs can install their own dependencies and can easily leave an unusable system even after a small gui app install. Of course it is stupid to install beta or testing core-apps/core-modules from AUR or PPAs on your main or production system. Don't blame the systems for that.

Great video, explaining problems with Manjaro. I notice some of the same issues.

When I need to throw some OS on a machine I usually use EndeavourOs, as arch user (btw), Eos is pretty much arch with faster install and especially setup since it has pretty good defaults and it would be my recommendation for anyone who wants to get better at using linux, play around with AUR etc. and if something happens they have pretty streamlined reinstall or system repair + basically all of Arch wiki is usable. For everyone else, yeah Debian or something based on would probably be better and yeah most people wouldn't see any real benefits with something Arch based (or rolling release in general)

For someone new to Linux who very much wants to use Arch for the AUR, but wants something that works out of the box and holds your hand the whole way, I'd recommend Garuda over Endeavour. Endeavour is great too, but if someone's fresh out of Windows, not having a GUI package manager can spook them right back to Microsoft. Garuda has a reliable team and, like Endeavour, is just Arch with more™ but has a lot of GUI stuff to install common apps right from its welcome screen, without needing to open a spooky scary terminal.

Concerning newer packages in Ubuntu and not using a lot of PPA'S.... Ever heard of snap and flatpak Eric?

This video makes me glad I went with Linux Mint as my starting distro, if the Manjaro team is THIS incompetent with things like making sure software doesn't break or making sure their own website has valid credentials to still be online, why should I trust anything about the actual OS?

breh i was looking forward to install manjaro but it looks like i should just wait for finals to ends and then read the whole arch doc so i can get used to what i gotta do to install it without the script as that would help in future if something breaks up

I started my Linux journey with Ubuntu, then Kubuntu then KDE Neon then Fedora KDE to finally come back to Manjaro for good. Why? Because in my experience it gives you the most stable, smooth and tasty Linux experience, which to me is the most important in a Linux distro.

Ever heard about Endeavour OS? For me, it is the perfect version of what Manjaro promises. You will need to use the terminal a bit (eg for installing software), but the forums are high quality and the AUR works flawlessly since Endeavour uses the Arch repositories.

Hey dude I am new to Linux and start University in 3 weeks. I hate windows and I am thinking of installing Ubuntu and using it as my daily drive and using it instead. The course I’m doing is sort of a mature age catch up program to get into university so I can apply for a CS degree, so I don’t think there is any specific software I need to download for it. Do you think it’s possible to do assignments etc or will I be at a disadvantage compared to using word etc? Thanks

A better alternative to manjaro if users want a preconfigured 'stable' rolling release distribution with lots of gui configuration options is opensuse tumbleweed.

Then there is fedora. Not to hot, not to cold. Just right.

I had pretty much the same experience with manjaro. Got sick of Шindows, tried to install arch, failed to install arch, then tried a first popular arch-based distro I found online -- manjaro. And overall, it wasn't that bad, but there were some problems with some outdated packages, mainly discord desktop app. In the end I just got tired of it, and switched to endeavour.

You should check out Arch-based CachyOS. Its the snappiest OS I've ever tried. The selection of scheduler kernels is amazing.

I made the same mistake. I've turned on AUR packages support and broke system upgrade / applications update due to dependencies. Now, I cannot update apps.

Four year using Manjaro KDE now; still the same home directory among several installations. Where does this accent comes from?

You mentioned a few things I find important to keep in mind: 1. You said that you used Manjaro 'a few years ago'. Rolling distributions can and do update **daily** so whatever was true a few years ago isn't likely relevant today. 2. You said that you used the "i3" version, which wasn't even the 'official' Manjaro disto, but you keep referring to the problems you had with Manjaro when, actually, it was the unofficial version that you were having problems with. 3. You said that you've been running Arch for 3 years and haven't had the same problems with your system that you had with Manjaro. However, that presupposes that your system is sensibly configured and updated which, as we both know, is almost never the case for people new to the Arch-iverse. With these things in mind, the case against Manjaro doesn't feel persuasive or compelling. It feels more like a content-driven appeal to the community's enthusiasm to bicker over distros. I switched from Windows 10 to linux about a year ago. I sought a distro for one primary reason: I play a lot of World of Warcraft, and I wanted to dump Windows for good and play WoW on linux. After a lot of reading and videos, I settled on Garuda linux. It was a pain to install. On two occasions, my pc wouldn't boot after an update and I had to reinstall from scratch. Super distasteful experience. I don't chalk up my experience to linux, or even to Garuda. I chalk it up to my inexperience on linux. And, even after a year, I consider myself a 'noob'. For example, until today, I had no idea that the AUR was 'unofficial' in the sense that the packages on there are not subjected to any sort of quality control. For all I know (as of now), those two reinstalls may have been because I unwittingly installed something buggy. For a little context, I'm an older guy. I was a software developer for 19 years before becoming disabled, and I've been on disability for about the same amount of time. After becoming disabled, I didn't stay at the cutting edge of technology and by now, I'm sure that I've forgotten most of what I knew. Add in the time since I was actively working as a developer, and most of the tech that's status quo today leaves me feeling like an old, clueless 'has been'. I won't go back to Windows just on principle. But, I feel intimidated by how much I don't know, and that includes about linux. I feel lucky to have been able to configure lutris and to download Wow, install prerequisite drivers, and get it to run. With all that in mind, I see videos like this one and I think, 'there's no f'ing way I'm going to be able to download Arch and teach myself enough about linux to be able to configure it sensibly such that it's stable for 3 years without any glitches.' I mean, I have enough trouble keeping Garuda stable (and it seems to be a well-respected fork from Arch; maybe I'm mistaken?). The forums are usually terse, with the attitude that I should go spend hours or days pouring through the wiki to get an answer. As much as I agree that self-reliance is a good outcome to shoot for, I also understand that when people are starting out, a little patience and helpfulness goes a long way to encourage them to 'keep trying' instead of just tossing them into the deep end of the pool, with the attitude that 'if they won't do the work, they deserve to drown'. I'm happy to do the work, but I also need at least some hand-holding some of the time. So, all that said, any recommendations for a distro that's noob friendly, but that's also rolling updates, and where the community doesn't just kick you to the curb with that elitist 'figure it out yoruself or DIE!' attitude?

Manjaro was the first Linux I've used before, man it's really confusing when using it for first time, then year later someone introduce me Arch. A linux only with CLI. Both are confusing back time, but now I'm pretty much used to it

I have the absolute worst experience as a current Manjaro user going on 3 years of use. After the first year, system updates started to break the system beyond usability of the userspace. So TimeShift (goated application) had to be used via TTY to restore the system. For two years now I have been using the same application versions and suffering the consequences. I need help switching to something else whilst keeping all of my user created files and folders. Perhaps even large portions of my home folder, or my steam library (though it may be flatpak steam so this might be problematic to do implement the games on another system?).

The bit around 4:00 is why I'm glad I watched this. If I were to switch to Manjaro and then have instability caused by the lack of synchronization between the repos and the AUR dependencies, then I'd be right back where I was with Ubuntu and the PPAs. Thanks for saving me the hassle.

I had a laptop and many drivers problems in windows 10, the wifi was very slow and buggy the image was buggy, I installed manjaro and I was shocked with the performance and the material worked out of the box the image was even better

was using manjaro for 1.5 years, the only issue was video drivers and kernel update after I was offline for 6 months. some dependency error, whatever. It required some manual intervention in the terminal: remove video drivers, do a whole upgrade, install video drivers again. I am almost sure I could avoid that if I used LTS kernel, but I couldn't predict that I will have to be offline for so long. regarding other people hating manjaro, it starts to feel like the same story: noobs come to linux, pick manjaro, break something because they don't know anything, and move on, blaming the distro. and the next distro feels "better", because they learn a thing or two between distrohopping. I have no idea how it is possible to break anything by installing something from AUR. maybe AUR issues were the real problem in the past, and it was solved by moving critical packages into manjaro repos, so they are never replaced by AUR packages anymore. I have firmware packages from AUR, I have a dozen of programs from AUR, also when I build something from AUR often I get some dependencies from there as well, but everything works fine. Regarding that theoretical issue with super new AUR packages with super duper new dependencies, I have never encountered that. I don't think I am the only lucky man on the planet. so... git gud scrub. regarding arch stability, few months ago I've seen a video from DistroTube, where he complained about arch packages stop working all the time, so he started to use snaps. imagine that lol.

I use arch on my laptop and Ubuntu let's on my desktop every time I've tried Manjaro something breaks within a week while nothing has really broken on my arch or Ubuntu installs

I'll be honest. I used to daily drive Manjaro before switching to arch and I have never had one AUR package break for me in that time. There are some hilarious oopsies in Manjaro's past (like the time they accidentally DDoS'd the AUR), but it's aggressively ok as a distro.

I've had more system breakage after updates that was easier to just reinstall than to fix (read: update left whole system unbootable without external boot media, corrupted or unreadable efi partition, improperly configured kernel, dependency hell, sometimes all at once) with Manjaro than any other distro. It was never unfixable or unrecoverable, but it was always something so annoying to fix, me being impatient I just downloaded a new ISO and reinstalled, or switched to another distro. If you want "easy button" Arch, Arco Linux xb, Garuda Linux, Endeavour OS, Xero Linux, Reborn OS, and Artix all offer varying degrees of post-install difficulty, but they'll all succeed to achieve what Manjaro tries and fails to accomplish - Arch for Noobs.

I was a windows user win10 to be specific but now I'm a archive user yes I went from being a win user to arch user in 3 days

Garuda Linux looks pretty neat but I've no idea if its better than EndevorOS for newbs

I've tried Manjaro four or five times in the last four years. It loads fine on my hardware but within a week or two it starts to have problems. During this time I don't change anything to give it a burn in period. I'll give it another try to see if it has improved.

Used endeavour with kde for a while last year, but one day i just updated my packages and after that i could no longer boot at all. Happened on 2 independent computers. Anyone else had issues like this?

Thanks for your video mr Eric i use regular Fedora KDE and Pop OS