Linux

Manjaro is training wheels except when it's time to take them off you realize they're super-glued in place

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

I'm not a distro hopper, but 6 years ago I ditched Windows and chose Manjaro in the i3wm flavor.

I learned a lot initially and now "live in the terminal" whenever possible and I'm still using the same install.

If you want to learn more about linux, I can recommend it.

lDK if straight arch is better (as i've never used it) but I think I kinda prefer not having a constant flood of updates.

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.

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

I’ve been running it for a few years. I’ve learned the hard way to not use the AUR. Manjaro breaks AUR software installs with its delayed release schedule. I’m running it now with pretty much all flatpaks and it’s MUCH more stable. So if you do run it, stay away from native AUR and opt for flatpaks instead.

The next time it breaks I’ll finally get motivated, nuke the drive, and install arch again (I liked arch better).

I think I have the skills now to keep an arch box alive, if you don’t have those skills then manjaro won’t really solve that problem either imo. Just go mint or something similar.

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

I don't understand the hate. I have been using Manjaro as my sole OS on two machines (a Thinkpad with XFCE, a Surface with Gnome) for several years, and have never had any major problem. Everything just works. The same could be said of Mint (which I used to be on before Manjaro), but I enjoy having faster updates on Manjaro. So I guess, from experience, I am very happy with it.

I was forced to switch from manjaro to fedora at work a year ago (we were forced to pick between Ubuntu or Fedora) and I miss it. Things break more often on fedora, I now even lag 1 release behind so that I don't have to deal with breaking updates. I didn't have any problems with manjaro. Still use it at home

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.

I've used Manjaro it went and died on me so now I just run arch

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.

It's mostly fine but has had enough issues over the years I stopped using it for my "I want arch but I'm lazy" distro. Arch itself is really not hard to install these days but if you find it too intimidating endeavor is basically just arch anyway but with an installer.

I used to use it. I updated and twice on mobile, twice on desktop, it broke my OS. I wouldn't touch it again.

Mint is great. Your specification is quite restrictive and will potentially open you up to suffering. Mint doesn't use snaps so not sure why you'd want to avoid.

I've been using Manjaro (XFCE edition) as my daily driver, both on a laptop and a desktop system for more than 6 years now. I've tried many others beforehand: Ubuntu and its variations, Arch, Fedora, Tumbleweed, ...

But Manjaro was what made me stop hopping around. While it's true that it has some pitfalls (e.g. cert issues, AUR incompatibility at times), to this day it's working well enough for me that I don't feel like switching away.

I'm not just browsing web on it either. Software engineering, music production, image and video processing, etc.

Then again, I don't consider myself a beginner at this point and can troubleshoot a fair amount of issues now that I simply couldn't when I started using Linux more than a decade ago.

I also try to:

• not overdo the amount of AUR stuff I use
• read the official forum post BEFORE whenever I run a system update

I also always appreciated the fact that I could get away with not doing a system update for like six weeks and then do a big one (as mentioned, in combination with reading their update announcement). That's always something that didn't quite work for me on Arch in the past (then again, I still was a beginner back then, so most "reinstall to solve this problem" situations back then were on me).

What if Manjaro really would get worse enough so I'd want to switch? I guess EndeavourOS would be an option, because it's very close to Arch, but at the same time, it seemingly offers a graphical installer that hopefully will set itself up properly on a laptop. Then again, I haven't installed Arch in quite a while now. Maybe the install experience has gotten much nicer.

I can't even play a steam game for more than 15 minutes without the wifi button disappearing from existence and never return back

I used Manjaro on raspberry pi and it worked well however i personally havent used Manjsro in years i still wouldnt use it though because its arch and i prefer simpler distros when i first started using Linux it was Linux Mint, then Kubuntu, then Zorin, then Fedora and now OpenSuSe Tumbleweed im happy with that distro and dont want to change it

Fedora is nice, not based on Ubuntu, and it mostly "just works" out of the box. The only obnoxious part is having to manually install codecs to play videos.

I used Ubuntu for a month. Switched to Manjaro for 9 months, then went to Artix Linux where I've been for 2 years.

Manjaro has quite a few issues which I think are addressed by EndeavorOS, which would be my personal recommendation.

A rolling release distro does require a bit more attention, however, as you should be updating your system more regularly and you'll occassionally run into dependency issues depending on how many packages you install.

This usually requires being a bit familiar with the command line and how to properly search internet resources to find answers to specific bugs. The Arch Wiki is an incredible resource about computers in general and worth looking into for pretty much anyone imho.

You'll want to also look into using the AUR, as eventually you'll find that you'll want/need a piece of software that isn't in the official repositories.

it would be better as an arch installer and a couple of extra packages - not completely different repos

If you want to try out other distros without friction, spin up a virtual machine via Gnome Boxes or virt-manager with some different distros

I don’t have the time to always be doing crazy power user stuff and just want something that works out of the box.

otherwise why change whats running for you?

My advice, pick a base distribution, and build what you want. Mostly when picking different distros all you are really picking is a package manager, default applications, and a desktop.

If you want to advance in your Linux knowledge building your own will help you quite a bit in learning how it works at the core and what peices are needed to run a system. Then when something breaks you have the understanding to fix or at least properly ask for help. I would especially say this is true if you are looking to switch to arch as your base distribution.

I would only recommend Manjaro to a new person trying to dip their toes into arch but not for their daily driver.

All opinions are biased and I don't like Manjaro!