The old Pardus, YALI was, and still is, the most awesome installer i've ever meet. Also Kaptan was amazing
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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Antergos (rip). It just worked. None of the weird problems I've had with Ubuntu/Debian
Ironically arch, the only issues I have when using it are usually just sound issues, which simply occur before a pipewire update, during one, or right after one. A reboot or two fixes things for me :p I get to enjoy a lightweight system without efforts I'm not willing to put:) (the features I guess are that it breaks a lot less than I expected, and that arch + i3 legit use around 450mb on idle for me ☠️)
I was surprised by how well Garuda KDE just... Works. Many users warned me to stay away from the smaller distros like Garuda but I've had zero issues after 6+ months of everyday use on 2 devices.
Sabayon. It worked perfectly till I tried to update some stuff 💣
This was one the most stable and at the same time the most unstable distribution I ever tried.
Kurumin Linux, which was a Brazilian distro based on Knoppix. This was back in 2006 or so, and that was my first hands-on experience with Linux.
I don't fully remember whether everything worked out of the box, I think it connected to the internet no problem (cable), but what amazed me was:
1 - It ran off the CD drive without needing to install anything 2 - It had loads of preinstalled utility software 3 - Less than 700MB
I was surprised, in a bad way, at how difficult it is to get any VNC running. I tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and base Debian, but couldn't get any VNC working. The closest I got was with Debian, but it gave me a different desktop than what was coming out the video port to my monitor. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has had better luck with anything.
Use Remmina on the client and then install anything that opens and listens to VNC ports. For example TightVNC or RealVNC.
Just even a small sys admin tip for Android phones
- For VNC - AVNC
- For SSH - ConnectBot
x11vnc works a dream once you have a systemd service running it on boot, but that rules Wayland out.
You may be able to get similar results by explicitly instructing the others to share display :0, otherwise they default to starting new sessions.
I can't remember if I have Wayland on my Debian installation with XFCE. I installed it several months ago, so I will check.
X11vnc works like a dream on X11, couldnt agree more.
There is wayvnc for Wayland supposedly to solve the same problem, but I havent tried it myself yet
I've taken a couple of pokes at it with no results. I'll just have to sit down with it some day and figure it out.
Manjaro and Ubuntu surprised me how bad they are
Manjaro is the only distro I've tried whose live image worked flawlessly, out of the box, and did everything I could think of, first try.
Granted this was 5 years ago when I set down to find an alternative to Ubuntu. Maybe today there are more distros that can do that.
At the time I tried all the usual suspects that are supposed to provide a user-friendly, gamer-friendly desktop experience and they all came short — except one.
That sold me. And it was surprising because I didn't really expect to find such a distro, I was just thinking I will make a list of what doesn't work out of the box on each, and pick the one with the least stuff. I didn't expect a distro to have no list.
Pop OS has worked out well for me even better than Ubuntu & Fedora.
Manjaro, its a clean and simple way to install Arch with lots of good GUI for all the tasks a user needs to do on their system... Then it crash and bricked the install... 3 times.
Anyways I'm on Mint now.
How did it crash?
Manjaro is a very opinionated distro and has a certain way of doing things. There's also a lot of bad advice online that tells you to do exactly the things that will break it. Doing things like using an experimental kernel, switching to unstable branch, using Arch repos, installing graphical drivers outside its driver tool, installing critical packages from AUR, using Arch-specific config commands and so on.
Manjaro will work perfectly if you let it work the way it was designed, but lots of people don't. Those people would be much better off using Arch or one of the Arch derivates that stay true to the way Arch does things.
Messing with Manjaro then complaining "it broke" is like using a toothbrush to slice bread and complaining it's not working. Well, it's the wrong tool for what you wanted, of course it won't work.
For me it was installing apps from the AUR, like Intel Compute. Had dependency issues and errors every time other packages updated and when I tried to fix it, other modules would uninstall, and break my DE, or put my machine in an unrecoverable state.
It’s not as bad as that time my btfs file system broke randomly in Fedora, since I was able to recover my data. But it always felt like an endless battle with the distro to keep it going. Which is why I moved to mint.
I know it was a Manjaro issue since when I attempted to move to EndevorOS the issues were gone… though I dont like it as a distro (I.e. why isn’t a package manager gui installed by default)
I believe intel-compute-runtime is in the official packages, why install from AUR?
Can't remember any more, either it was installed along side another package, or it was installed because of intel openCL support. Either way it's been over a year since my last Manjaro install borked, and I've been running (and upgraded) Linux Mint.
Endeavour os was the great manjaro replacement for mw
Endeavour is Arch and Manjaro isn't. Endeavour is not a replacement for Manjaro for that reason alone.
"I installed distro B over distro A" does not mean "distro B is a replacement for distro A". They can be wildly different and it could be very misleading for someone looking for something that's actually similar to distro A.
While I agree with you, what is attractive about Manjaro that you want that EOS does not offer?
I also tend to see EndoeavourOS as a great Manjaro replacement because what I want is a high-quality, opinionated, and easy to install no-nonsense distro that offers a massive repository of very up-to-date software in its repos.
I used to think Manjaro looked better but I installed it recently and I did not like it as much as the default EOS look. Perhaps I am just conditioned.
The only thing that stands out for me that people might prefer about Manjaro is the graphical package management. Of course, it is a one-time, one line command to install the very same package manager in EOS that Manjaro uses. Does that disqualify EOS as a Manjaro replacement?
First of all would be the fact that Endeavour is basically just an installer. It should have been an alternative offered by Arch alongside archinstall. I know it also offers some desktop setup but IMO that's too little to qualify as a distro. You can replicate looks and themes fairly easily. Might as well install Arch.
...but I don't want Arch because I'm at a point where I want my desktop distro to be boring and predictable, so it enables me to focus on other things. Arch needs more maintenance than I'm willing to put in. But I also want a rolling distro and having recent-enough packages.
Manjaro is a unique combination of rolling and stability. It's that combo that's the main factor but I'd be lying if I didn't say I enjoy not having to ever think about the graphics drivers, or about the kernel, and it's nice to have a graphical package manager.
As a sidenote, Garuda goes the extra mile and adds similar quality-of-life tools, while staying true to Arch repos. I think Garuda should get the publicity as an actual alternative in-between Arch and Manjaro, rather than Endeavour.
Ok I understand the technical reality you poin to, I just refer to the user experience. For a normal user, you probably won't notice that technically manjaro is not arch and EOS is. IMHO Manjaro breaks a lot and EOS just works and needs less manteinance.
How long have you been using each of them? In my years-long experience it's been the exact opposite. Manjaro goes out of its way to not break anything and offers safety measures out of the box to recover if something should break. Arch doesn't care, it introduces breaking changes all the time and expects its users to be able to cope with them.
They target very different types of users and have very different goals. Manjaro explicitly tries to be stable and user-friendly whereas Arch exclusively caters to advanced users and aims to be customizable above all.
You can achieve the same with Arch that you get out of the box with Manjaro but it's not there by default – because that's not something a lot of Arch users are seeking.
For a normal user, you probably won't notice that technically manjaro is not arch and EOS is.
What's a "normal" user? On Linux you get all sorts. But you will most definitely notice a difference between daily driving Manjaro vs driving Arch.
Sorry for my ignorance, Linux noob here, but what do you both mean by Manjaro isn't Arch?
Manjaro uses the binary packages prepared by Arch but a distro is more than just a set of packages. (In fact a distro should be more than just copying packages, otherwise it wouldn't be worth being called a distinct distro.)
Arch's goal is to be an ultra-customizable distro. To this end it starts out extremely minimalistic and requires the user to "assemble" it during the install from basic components, just so it doesn't end up with anything that's not wanted.
If a user can do this then they're above average in experience and knowledge; and since Arch can reliably assume this about its users it doesn't coddle them. The maintainers can afford to issue breaking changes that may even go as far as render your install non-operational, because they know their users can deal with it.
Another big Arch feature is being a rolling-release distro and bleeding-edge. This means that packages are released as fast as their developers can make them. This means they often have new bugs. This is the price users pay for the privilege of having very fresh software all the time.
Manjaro prioritizes a safe environment for the user and a more stable experience, where the install doesn't break (at all, if possible), and can be very easily be restored if it should break. And as a consequence it attracts users with less experience and Linux knowledge.
However, in order to achieve this Manjaro does some things very differently from Arch:
- It holds back new packages and releases them late(r), when the Manjaro curators deem them usable.
- It offers an alternate package manager with a more user-friendly interface.
- It recommends the use of long term stable kernel (LTS) releases and mandates installing crucial drivers (graphical drivers in particular) through its own custom tools.
These differences mean that if a Manjaro user were to ask for help from an Arch crowd, the Arch users can't reliably help because they have no idea what's going on on the Manjaro side. They may use older packages and the issue being described was fixed in a very fresh version. They use tools (the kernel manager, the package manager, the driver manager) that Arch doesn't have.
Also there's very little overlap between the average Manjaro and Arch userbase. If an Arch user is more experienced and the Manjaro user isn't they're going to have trouble relating to each other. The Arch user doesn't see an issue in some occasional breakage, whereas a Manjaro user might consider that unacceptable and so on.
Last but not least there's a purely technical reason – Manjaro not only delays packages but hosts them in their own repositories, and sometimes goes as far as changing them. This makes it literally "not Arch" – using distinct repos is a step too far in terms of distro heritage.
Thank you for the very detailed explanation! Makes sense now. I was of the mindset that Manjaro is an Arch derivative making it technically Arch and didn't really take the repos etc into account. Makes sense why they advise against the use of AUR
You've opened my eyes haha.
I appreciate the response, I always worry asking "noob" questions from all the elitist horror stories you hear around Linux
The repo delay is not the main cause of AUR warnings. While it can in theory cause mismatched dependencies for some AUR packages, in practice it doesn't really happen that often.
The main issue with AUR is that it's completely unregulated. Anybody can put anything in it, there's no quality criteria, AUR scripts run as root and can do anything on your system, 75% of AUR packages were not updated during the last year, 15% were released once and never updated, and 10% are completely abandoned.
Arch itself doesn't support AUR for those reasons. You should be wary of using AUR packages in general, on any system that can use them, always assume they can break at any moment, and never use them for anything critical.
I'll definitely take that into account.
As an example though, I use the AUR for the arr packages. If not from the AUR, where else would I get them? Would I need to clone the git and build them myself instead?
I used manjaro for 3 years or so and then been using EOS for similar time. Manjaro broke a lot of times. EOS is more stable for me.
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