Linux

if you want an Arch based distro, Endeavour OS is more popular – Manjaro has had a few issues over the years

What even is an unbiased opinion? That doesn't even begin to make sense.

That being said, my very biased opinion is that it's a great way to install Arch without learning how Arch works so that when it inevitably breaks you don't even know how to ask the right questions.

I have used it in the past for a few years. I don't think you should. Why?

• The Manjaro devs are idiots. They have broken the AUR on multiple occasions.
• Their packages break more often than upstream Arch since you get update bundles which they release. This isn't tested as well as it should and may lead to things breaking.
• Arch is also easier to install nowadays, if you really want a rolling release distro.

If you just want something not-Ubuntu and easy to use, I tend to favor Fedora personally.

I never recommend Manjaro, even for experienced users. Multiple times, they've let their ssl certificats expire, and renewing those has been easy to automate for a number of years at this point. There have been a number of cases where they ship work-in-progress versions of software as part of their default install, and there was an open letter posted calling this out: https://dont-ship.it

So in my opinion, Manjaro leaves much to be desired from a project governance standpoint.

Now, using an Arch-based distro that does the install process for you doesn't absolve you from learning what it takes to maintain an Arch install; at some point, something will crop-up that requires manual intervention to get back up & running again after an update.

If that is what you're looking for, I suggest EndeavourOS.

I used manjaro for a long while before I distro hopped and I think it’s a fine distro. Never had any problems with it. People keep pointing to the couple of times when it had some certificate issues. I don’t think it’s very relevant, and I only had positive things to say while I was using it.

if you want to use Arch, just use Arch

I used to love Manjaro. It looks gorgeous ( to my eye ). Sadly, I now see it as a bit of a low-quality mess with governance issues. Manjaro broke my system more than once. Although I did not believe it when I used Manjaro, getting off of it has shown me that I regularly had AUR compatibility problems as well.

These days, I would recommend EndevourOS over Manjaro. It is just as easy in practice, I have found it to be far more stable. Once installed, EndevourOS is 99.8% the same as a well configured vanilla Arch. It uses the Arch package repositories natively.

Even more than Manjaro, I used to love Pamac and graphical package management. Now I think Pamac is garbage. It has caused so many problems for me. I mostly use yay to manage packages now. A really great middle ground between GUI package management and yay or pacman is pacseek. You have to use yay to install it but, for the times I may have missed Pamac, it has been awesome.

Wouldn't let it touch my system. Try Endeavor if you want to hop to an arch based distro.

I'm not a fan for a few reasons, but they're all on my end.

I will say, though, that if you "don't have time to always be doing crazy power user stuff," an Arch based distro might not be what you're looking for. This is especially true of an Arch based distro that strays pretty far from the core distribution.

My suggestion would be to try Fedora or OpenSuse Tumbleweed instead. I'm a big Fedora fan, and it's honestly great - much better than Ubuntu IMHO. It's also easy to maintain and less prone to user-induced breakage than Arch distros.

If you're looking for something even more different, but still not prone to breakage, then you might try looking into an immutable distro. Silverblue, OpenSuse Aeon, blendOS, or VanillaOS are all nice places to start looking.

I've had more success with Manjaro than any other distro. I've gotten lots of software working because of the great package manager, all using a GUI. I think it's really easy to use and at the same time really flexible and powerful. I've tried to install Arch twice and failed both times. I guess I'm an idiot. Manjaro is easy to install and you get all the power a flexibility of Arch's package management.

What is your biased opinion on having unbiased opinions?

I've used Arch, Manjaro, and Endeavour. For ease of use it's between Manjaro and Endeavour and I'd pick Endeavour. Arch is great too. When you're ready to go deeper, give it a shot.

I run Manjaro as my gaming rig and have had no real issues.

My unbiased opinion is that for what it sets out to achieve (no hastle Arch Linux setup) there are better options. EndeavourOS is worth looking at. I'll leave it to others to list the drawbacks of Manjaro's package triaging approach. I'm still having my morning coffee in bed, so I'm typing this with one hand.

It sucks.

I've never used Manjaro, but I've used Arch (I don't currently use it) enough to know where it went wrong. Basically, they're trying to make a snapshot based distro out of a distro that's not snapshot based, and they run into issues because of it. On Arch, if you have an issue, you revert and wait a couple days. On Manjaro, if you have an issue, you revert and then wait, a week? Two? Is there any reasonable assumption that the next snapshot is good? I don't think they have the manpower to ensure snapshots are high quality, so they're merely whatever existed at the time, perhaps with obvious issues fixed.

I currently use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, which is snapshot based by design, while also being a rolling release. The way OpenSUSE works is by having all snapshots go through openQA, which means all snapshots (near daily) go through an automated test suite. So if something breaks, they'll write a test and the next snapshot won't have that issue.

So my opinion is to go with something release based (e.g. Mint) or bleeding edge (e.g. Arch), but don't try to go somewhere in the middle unless you have a larger team. So either trust your user or your dev team, there shouldn't be a middle ground.

If you want to divorce yourself from Ubuntu (and I think that's a good idea myself) you can always run Linux Mint Debian Edition. Since you're so new to Linux, I would stick with Linux Mint as your daily driver and take the time to really learn the command line, shell scripting, process control, and everything Unix-like. Get good with tools like awk, sed, grep, find, and learn about regex. Distro hopping won't help to really learn the ins and outs.

Also take time to learn tools like iptables/nftables, ip route, IP forwarding. There's so much you can learn without distro hopping. Once you become well versed in all things command line, then you can start searching for use case specific distro. I use Arch myself but it's not for the beginning user.

Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit

It's not reliable. They try to combine stable with unstable packages and it doesn't work. It's only a matter of time before your graphics get messed up and you boot into a terminal. Avoid.

Get Linux Mint. You'll thank me

If you want something user friendly and something with good gui support, why not try out fedora or opensuse tumbleweed

I have several family members and friends on Manjaro for the last several years. I have had virtually no need to intervene with it on their behalf, and these are users with zero linux knowledge (one of them believes they have a Mac because I pimped the UI to look like OSX).

Despite the detractors, I think it's the least hassle distro I've encountered, and I've used Linux for 25 years.

How is anyone supposed to have an unbiased opinion?

What features of Manjaro would make it something you prefer? A different DE? Mint offers more than just one.

Was my first distro and used it for years without isses

Loved it

I've installed Arch, Arcos and Manjaro (from the Arch based distros). Manjaro and Arcos are faster and easier to install and setup compared to Arch. Manjaro has nice GUI to select kernel, GPU drivers and install software (and does not automatically move you to the newest kernel, as opposed to Arch or Arcos). They had fucked up (I think 3 times) with renewing their SSL certificate, and for a short while their ISOs were unverifiable (not that big of an issue if you ask me). Since they delay their packages' updates, running them in testing for a few months for extra stability, installing from AUR is bound to break.

I've installed Manjaro on 3 computers, and worked with it extensively for about 3 years. It's a decent distro that doesn't deserve all the hate it gets.

I ran Manjaro for a couple of years as my daily driver before moving on to EndeavourOS. At this point I've probably spent an equal amount of time on both distros.

Their holding back of arch packages might sound like a good idea, but in reality not so much. Most of the time the same oopsies slip through with a bit of delay. Other times being out of sync with AUR causes additional issues. Arch stable is already stable, so holding back is just extra work with no gain in my book. Any additional testing effort would be better spent on Arch testing instead of doing the same work with delay.

I've distro-hopped quite a bit. I used Manjaro for about 4-5 months. I really liked it actually. I did end up having some problems after an update, and even with some community help, I wasn't able to fix it. After that, I decided to try Arch and ended up loving and using it for the past 5 or so years.

If you're new to Linux and insist on using an Arch based distro, Manjaro is probably a good choice for you, but if you have used Linux for a while and are comfortable with system configuration, I really couldn't recommend Arch enough.

Both communities are very well established and responsive, but Arch is on its own level. The Arch wiki is really an amazing thing, and aside from some gatekeepers, the majority of the Arch community is happy to help.

I know you said that you don't want to be doing "crazy power user stuff" all the time, but really once you get everything set up the way you like it (it took me maybe 2-3 hours after installation), you can basically leave configuration and use it just like Manjaro and have -- in my experience -- a more stable system.

Up to you, but you seem like you might be comfortable in Linux already, so I'd recommend just going for Arch.

Nope. Countless stories of updates breaking everything, developer incompetency (pamac, their GUI pacman wrapper, took the AUR down twice) and a lot more.

https://youtu.be/5KNK3e9ScPo (keep in mind that the treasury thing never happened)

For a more successful attempt at a stable rolling release, try openSUSE tumbleweed. For an arch based solution, try EndeavorOS or Garuda.

Fedora does do a point release model but not nearly as bad as Ubuntu's.

TBH, if you don't have bleeding edge hardware just stay with OPENSUSE Leap, Debian Stable, Linux Mint or LMDE. If you are feeling adventurous, even Slackware will cover your back most of the time and gives you more bragging rights than Arch. Even if you have bleeding edge hardware, you are better off with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora and Arch.

Manjaro is just not that stable. It once was the only way to install an Arch-ish system without having to go through the hassle of the official Arch installation guide, but currently there are several options to avoid this guide and still have a vanilla Arch system. That's how I used Manjaro for a brief period. The tools I remember they provide, or even better alternatives, are in the Arch User Repo (AUR) anyway, available for all Arch-like distro users. Maybe the only exception to this is the wide catalog of kernels that Manjaro provides, but an equally extensive catalog is available for Arch users through official and third-party repos and the AUR.

Manjaro is not quite exciting but also not quite stable. I think it's a distro most people get by accident.

Not really an opinion but I guess an experience - Manjaro was my first ever Linux distro.

I switched to it around 4 years ago and everything seemed to work except that I had this issue where if a game was running for 30 minutes or longer, it would progressively run worse and worse until it either crashed or I would just restart it. Didn't really find any solution online, the issue didn't happen on windows so I just switched back after 2 weeks.

Half a year later I decided to give it another shot, but I had a completely different issue I couldn't figure out how to fix, so I switched away from it 3 days later to Mint. Switched back to Windows a day later because I wasn't much of a fan of apt when compared to pacman, and arch (what Manjaro is based on) is this mythical distro that's very hard to install and use, so I didn't bother.

Then another half a year later I switched to arch and stuck to it, with minor distro hopping here and there but always came back to arch. Thanks to Manjaro, I knew pacman commands and had overcome the fear of the terminal, which did make the switch to arch much easier.

That being said, my opinion is that you should at the very least try it. If the distro gives you no problems - fantastic, but if gives you major issues like in my case, then at least you get to familiarize yourself with arch-based distributions and maybe try EndeavourOS or Arch in the future.

I like it a lot. It gives you the arch experience without the hassle of installing it.

Manjaro is a great way for a new linux user to inevitably break their install and have no idea how they did it, then never figure out how to fix it, while breaking it more while trying.

I’ve never installed it, but I know a few people who used it as their first distro, and none of them recommend it, or other arch based distros, and especially not to new users. For the above reason.

Regular arch is better, but I’d only recommend it if you are interested in becoming a power user.

I have been using fedora for a while now, and it has been surprisingly stable and functional out of the box. I’ve only broken my install once in the past two years, and that’s been because I do a lot of power user things. As for new linux users, I’ve recommended it to a few friends who were starting out, and they’ve had great success with it.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is another distro that might be good if you want something that just works while being rolling release. I’ve tried it out alongside OpenSUSE Leap and Fedora, but ended up preferring Fedora.

Debian was my first distro, and I’ve enjoyed using it. I used this extensively before I was much of a power user with great success, and I’ve heard many people say great things about debian 12.

The only good think of that distro is their green color.

Flawless on my thinkpad T480, occasionaly some issues on my gaming PC usually nvidia drivers post update but not as much lately

Manjaro is bullshit

I used to use it on my laptop and found it to be stable and solid. I never encountered any of the theoretical issues people brandish about. The GUI app store was really good (pamac) and frankly if it was included with EndeavourOS it would be perfect and I could recommend EOS to anyone; without the GUI app store EOS really are intentionally limiting how popular they could be. The default wallpapers were a little bland.

I switched to endeavour as when wanting to move away from Ubuntu on my desktop Manjaro didn't like my multi monitor setup (and nor did anything else I tried other than EndeavourOS and Ubuntu). If that had worked I might still be using it now.

Its ok. The logo looks crap but it has everything I needed already installed where other distros required me to configure or set stuff up. I've had no manjaro related issues over the last 2 years and it's the only distro that hasn't come with an issue out of the box.

Pop os and mint are great I don't think they should be written off just because they're Ubuntu based. Fedora is solid, endeavor and Garuda are arch based and good as well. All the people saying arch requires no setup now that it has an installer are wrong. It will set you up with a barebones system and you'll have to customize from there which can be a hassle if you aren't familiar with linux.

I had more trouble in a few month of Manjaro on a secondary system than I had with Arch in over 15 years. The amount of conflicts I had to resolve during package updates was crazy. If I now want to set up a new system, I use EndeavorOS as a base. Quick install procedure but I end up with something very close to Arch.

The whole thing with holding back package updates for a some weeks doesn't make a ton of sense to me, especially given that to my understanding security updates are often held back as well. The main advantage over Arch is that it has a graphical installer, but IMO Arch really isn't that hard to install now with archinstall being a thing.

In another vein, they've let their website certificate expire on multiple occasions, and have shipped pamac versions that have ended up DDoSing the AUR on multiple occasions as well. All this hints at some fairly serious mismanagement and doesn't exactly lend itself to the implicit trust required of distro maintainers.

I did use Manjaro for a decent stretch before eventually switching to Arch, and functionally I didn't notice any difference after switching apart from the AUR manager I used and packages making their way to my system sooner. This is a big part of why I say I don't really see the point.